{UAH} Allan/Edmund/Pojim/WBK: Zuma Drops Court Bid to Stop Graft Report as Protests Mount - Bloomberg
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Zuma Drops Court Bid to Stop Graft Report as Protests Mount
South African President Jacob Zuma's authority continued to wane as he abandoned efforts to block the release of a potentially damaging graft report and thousands gathered in Pretoria to protest state corruption.
Zuma's lawyer announced on the second day of a High Court hearing that he was dropping his request to halt the publication of the report on whether the Gupta family influenced cabinet appointments and state contracts. The court ordered that the report be published at 5 p.m. local time. Nearby, executives of some of South Africa's biggest companies joined protests against Zuma's government, along with members of civil rights, religious groups, opposition parties and a number of prominent ruling African National Congress members. The rand gained as much as 1.7 percent against the dollar.
The latest setbacks highlighted the fading influence of Zuma, who's been implicated in a succession of scandals since taking office in May 2009. Public calls for him to resign have escalated since Monday when Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, with whom Zuma has battled for control of the Treasury, won a reprieve from fraud charges that he described as politically motivated. The next day ANC supporters including a 300,000-member health workers' union and the Nelson Mandela Foundation urged him to step down.
"I will be surprised if Zuma were to survive until January," Prince Mashele, a political analyst at Pretoria-based Centre for Politics and Research, said by phone. "His days are numbered. South Africans will know the contents of the report and from the leaks that we have been seeing, this report is not full of roses for the president."
Zuma's Reputation
The controversy over the ombudsman's report compounded a series of blows to Zuma's reputation. The Constitutional Court ruled in March that he violated his oath of office by refusing to abide by a directive from the graft ombudsman to repay taxpayer money spent on upgrading his private home. In August local elections, the ANC suffered its worst electoral performance since Nelson Mandela led it to power in 1994 to end apartheid.
"The tide has turned against Jacob Zuma," Nicholas Spiro, a partner at London-based Lauressa Advisory Ltd., which advises asset managers, said by e-mail. "There's an inescapable feeling that he can no longer soldier on for another three years, but hounding him out of office is easier said than done. South African politics has a Brazilian feel to it right now and Rousseff fought tooth and nail to avoid being impeached."
Political Upheaval
The political upheaval has weighed on South Africa's rand and bonds and raised the risk of the nation's credit rating being downgraded to junk. The rand was 1.6 percent stronger against the dollar at 13.3879 by 1:15 p.m. in Johannesburg, erasing an earlier decline of as much as 0.5 percent and leading gains among 31 major and emerging market currencies tracked by Bloomberg.
"We have to come to terms with the fact that for as long as we have President Zuma as president of the country, it is not possible to turn the situation around," Sipho Pityana, the chairman of gold producer AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. and convener of Save South Africa, which organized Wednesday's protest, told reporters in Pretoria. "We've told him that we believe he is no longer deserving to lead this country."
The ombudsman's investigation relates to the dismissal and appointment of cabinet ministers and board members and directors of state-owned companies and possibly corrupt influence in the awarding of state contracts and licenses to companies linked to members of the Gupta family. It was completed just days before Thuli Madonsela's seven-year term as graft ombudsman came to an end and she was replaced by Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who didn't oppose the bid to halt the report's release.
Gupta Ties
Zuma has come under pressure to explain his relationship with the Guptas, who he says are friends and are in business with his son, after current and former government officials claimed the family tried to influence their decisions. Both Zuma and the Guptas deny wrongdoing.
The National Health and Allied Workers Union, an ANC ally with about 300,000 members, urged Zuma on Tuesday to take the "honorable and courageous decision" and step down before his current term ends in 2019 and for his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa to replace him. The South African Democratic Teachers Union, National Union of Mineworkers and Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union are also set to call for Zuma's resignation, Johannesburg-based newspaper Business Day reported Wednesday, citing union officials it didn't identify.
Zuma, whose allies dominate the ANC's leadership, has denied ever intentionally breaking the law and shrugged off calls to resign. Zuma shouldn't shoulder the blame for the ANC's failings and removing him won't resolve South Africa's problems, the New Age newspaper, which is part-owned by the Gupta family, reported Wednesday, citing ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe.
Cheryl Carolus, a former ANC leader, urged the party to act in the national interest and address the nation's leadership void.
"Our county is in crisis," she said. "We could have done a lot better if there was leadership. Our government and our ANC is missing in action."
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