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Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | South Africa readied to welcome wealthy former businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as its new president Thursday after scandal-tainted Jacob Zuma resigned under intense pressure from his own party.
Zuma announced he had stepped down in a late-night television address in which he took some digs at the African National Congress (ANC) party that had threatened to oust him via a parliament no-confidence vote.
In a 30-minute speech, Zuma said he had “come to the decision to resign as president of the republic with immediate effect”.
President Zuma: I have thereof come to the decision to resign as the President of the Republic of South Africa with immediate effect
— South African Government (@GovernmentZA) February 14, 2018
“I have only asked my party to articulate my transgressions and the reason for its immediate instruction that I vacate office,” he said.
Zuma, 75, has been in a lengthy power struggle with Ramaphosa, the deputy president.
Ramaphosa, who won control of the ANC when he was elected as its head in December, is likely to be voted in by parliament as South Africa’s new president on Thursday or Friday.
Zuma, in an earlier TV interview on Wednesday, said he had received “very unfair” treatment from the party that he joined in 1959 and in which he had fought for decades against apartheid white-minority rule.
He said he was angered over “the manner in which the decision is being implemented… I don’t agree, as there is no evidence of if I have done anything wrong.”
– Forced out –
The party’s national executive committee ordered Zuma recall from office on Tuesday, after a 13-hour meeting at a hotel outside Pretoria, but he at first refused.
ANC officials said that if Zuma did not resign, the party’s lawmakers in the Cape Town parliament would vote out Zuma on Thursday.
But senior party official Jesse Duarte said after the resignation that “we are not celebrating”.
“We have had to recall a cadre of the movement that has served this organisation for over 60 years, it’s not a small matter,” she added.
Zuma, who had no formal education, was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela under apartheid and rose through the ranks of the ANC to take power in 2009.
But his rule was dominated by graft scandals, economic slowdown and falling popularity for the celebrated liberation party.
