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Beleaguered South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday faced a no-confidence vote in parliament for a second time in less than a year and a legal bid to reinstate corruption charges against him.
The mounting pressure on the president comes against a background of economic crisis sparked by his firing of two finance ministers within days in December.
The fallout was followed by a public row between the respected new Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and the head of the tax authority, which has again rattled markets.
The no-confidence vote was called by the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
“A motion of no confidence is the best mechanism to ensure that President Zuma is removed from the presidency,” said DA chief whip John Steenhuisen.
The motion is highly unlikely to succeed as Zuma’s African National Congress (ANC) has
an overwhelming majority in
parliament. The DA has asked for a secret ballot, so ANC lawmakers who would like to see Zuma go can vote without fear of retribution—but that is not expected to be granted.
Steenhuisen said that in response to a DA campaign, more than a million online letters lobbying ANC lawmakers to support the motion against Zuma had been sent in the run-up to the vote.
“This is… a clear indication that South Africans are increasingly tired of the president’s poor performance and are putting their support behind the opposition,” he said.
The DA is also pursuing an attempt in the High Court in Pretoria to reinstate charges of corruption against Zuma which were dropped in 2009, shortly before he became president.
The charges, which relate to a multi-billion dollar arms deal signed in 1999, were dropped allegedly because of interference in the prosecution case by his political opponents.
A statement from the presidency on Monday described the court proceedings as “an abuse of process by a political party in order to advance a political agenda. “Through his submissions to the High Court, President Zuma will maintain that the decision (to drop the charges) was rationally derived at.”
The ANC has also described the DA’s no-confidence motion as “a frivolous stunt” designed to divert public attention from “the racism scandals embarrassing the party on an ongoing basis”.