Zuma accuses Ramaphosa of buying his presidency and selling out comrades. Picture: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers.
Former President Jacob Zuma has recently shifted his election campaign to high gear after accusing his successor, president Cyril Ramaphosa of buying his presidency.
Zuma further accused Ramaphosa of selling out his comrades to the highest bidder while he also said Ramaphosa and some of those in his Cabinet were never in the Struggle.
In December last year, Zuma, who is the former president of the ANC, washed his hands off his beloved party, vowing not to campaign for it while showing allegiance to the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party.
Speaking in Zulu, Zuma in a video that went viral on social media, during one of his MK campaign trails in uMlazi, outside Durban, also said he did not know the ANC that existed in recent years and called it “Ramaphosa’s ANC”.
“The ANC that exists is not the ANC I know … This is Ramaphosa’s ANC. The Ramaphosa I’ve never seen during the Struggle… I’ve never even seen most of the people that he is working with in his Cabinet during the Struggle,” he said.
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya’s phone rang unanswered.
Zuma and Ramaphosa were summoned to testify during the state capture commission chaired by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
“The first thing I said at the commission, which is not a secret, is that I had a problem with having a president that was not a president… It emerged that the president was not elected the first time. He was not elected by the people we sent to go choose leaders… he bought the presidency with a lot of money,” Zuma said.
He was referring to the party’s elective conference in 2017 when Ramaphosa defeated Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma for the presidency.
“He was asked by the judge (Zondo) at the commission and he confessed and the whole country heard that he bought the position of being president. He is not our president…There was a lot of money that he was given by the ‘whites’' from abroad,” he said.
Zuma further accused the EU of funding Ramaphosa R1.6 billion to get rid of former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
Mkhwebane was impeached by MPs last year and was later fired by Ramaphosa.
“He (Ramaphosa) broke the law… he also broke the ANC’s rules by saying that the party is the most corrupt organisation in the country.
“If we were moral people we would be hiding our faces in shame that the ANC is corrupt. There is no such thing… I answered him and told him that he was lying. The ANC is not corrupt.”
Without mentioning his name, Zuma added that there were people who were accusing the president of being a sell-out during apartheid.
He said: “The MKVA (uMkhontho we Sizwe Veterans) came to me and said to me that there was a person who was suspected to be a sell-out.
“They had come to me to seek counsel to be advised on what to do next… so I said to them they must write a letter to the secretary-general of the party who can deal with the matter at hand.”
Zuma said when the veterans came back with the letter it requested for him to be investigated.
Zuma said “the president” never denied it when leader of the Patriotic Alliance (Gayton McKenzie) and Cope leader Terror Lekota accused him of being a sell-out.
“He never denied it when two people accused him of being a sell-out… that is our president!” he said.
The Star
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