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{UAH} Allan/Edmund/Gook/Pojim/WBK: Cyril Ramaphosa elected president of South Africa’s ruling party


Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's deputy president, was declared the new party leader of the African National Congress on Dec. 18. (Reuters)

By Peter GranitzDecember 18 at 2:13 PM
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa's ruling party on Monday chose Cyril Ramaphosa, a reformer who helped negotiate the end of apartheid, to succeed President Jacob Zuma as the president of the African National Congress and likely the country's next leader.

Ramaphosa was elected at a party conference here after the vote was delayed more than 24 hours to settle internal disputes. He defeated former government minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, who is also Jacob Zuma's ex-wife.

Zuma's second five-year term as party president will end with the close of the convention Wednesday, but he will remain president of the country until 2019. His years as president have been marked by rampant corruption that has left voters disenchanted with the ANC.

Ramaphosa now faces the task of winning back the support of voters.

Twenty-three years after the country held its first all-race election, which the ANC won with Nelson Mandela at the helm, more than one in two South Africans lives in poverty. The country suffers from an unemployment rate of nearly 30 percent. Systemic corruption prompted two ratings agencies to downgrade the country, Africa's most industrialized, to junk status.

Cyril Ramaphosa is the newly elected president of the African National Congress. (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg)
The ANC under Zuma has seen its share of the electorate fall in each of the last three elections. In 2016, it lost control of Johannesburg, Tshwane, which includes the capital, Pretoria, and Nelson Mandela Bay.

Ramaphosa founded the National Union of Mineworkers and led the union through strikes that shook the apartheid-era economy. He helped negotiate the end of apartheid on behalf of the ANC and was Mandela's chosen successor to lead the party.

When he lost his chance to become ANC president in the 1990s, Ramaphosa embarked on a lucrative career in the private sector and amassed a fortune that ranked him as one of the country's wealthiest people. His Shanduka Group, a holding company, invested in the mining sector. He divested from the company and stepped down from various corporate boards three years ago.

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Ramaphosa's opponent, Dlamini Zuma, served as health minister to Mandela, foreign affairs minister, and chairwoman of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa. Her base of support came from the rural provinces where the ANC often provides some of the only employment opportunities.

She would have been hampered in a general election in 2019 in part because of her name: She and Jacob Zuma have four children and divorced in 1998.

Jacob Zuma told reporters before the results were announced he was "bowing out happy" and comfortable with his contribution to the ANC and South Africa.

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ANC members celebrate after Ramaphosa is elected president of the party in Johannesburg on Monday. (Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
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Cyril Ramaphosa elected president of South Africa's ruling party - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/south-africas-ruling-party-chooses-cyril-ramaphosa-as-new-president/2017/12/18/4ac02e4e-e3fb-11e7-927a-e72eac1e73b6_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-card-world%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.a589a2e2cc11

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