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Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s former president, is free to run as a parliamentary candidate in next month’s general election after the country’s electoral court overturned a previous decision to ban him.
The ruling on Tuesday is a blow to the governing African National Congress, which Zuma deserted last year to help form a rival party called uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK).
The ANC tried unsuccessfully to have MK disqualified from putting forward candidates in the election, but its petition was rejected by the electoral court last month.
Zuma’s new party, named after the former armed wing of the ANC, is expected to do well in the former president’s home province of Kwazulu-Natal, where the majority of people belong to his Zulu ethnic group.
Nationally, MK could win enough support to become the fourth-largest parliamentary group, which might help push the ANC’s vote share to below 50 per cent for the first time since multi-party elections began in 1994.
Zuma, 81, was president from 2009 to 2018, a period when the ANC became associated with systemic corruption in South Africa, in a process known as “state capture”.
When he was jailed in 2021 for contempt of court, after failing to answer questions at a state capture inquiry, violence broke out across much of the country.
There had been fears of a similar eruption of violence if the electoral court upheld the previous decision to ban Zuma from running in the May 29 election.
Zuma’s increasingly fractious relations with the ANC, which he once led, culminated last December when he joined the MK.
The MK stands on a platform of “radical economic transformation”, which it defines as a rapid restructuring of the economy in favour of the Black majority.
MK is widely considered a Zulu nationalist party, though its officials deny this.
Zuma has also sought to gain attention by proposing policies such as sending pregnant teenagers to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, to complete their education.
“Zuma’s party is a cult,” said Moeletsi Mbeki, a political analyst and brother of Thabo Mbeki, who was Zuma’s predecessor as ANC leader and South African president. “It is not a modern political party.”
Rising populism and identity politics were symptoms of the ANC’s inability to solve the country’s deep economic problems and inequalities, Mbeki added. “It’s the beginning of the end of the ANC, a slow disappearing.”
Chris Lebona, an MK member, said his party was more serious than the ANC about addressing huge fissures in South African society.
“Economic power is still with the white minority and the majority of people are suffering,” he added.
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