Half of ANC ‘want Zuma to quit office’

JOHANNESBURG

As South Africa’s democracy icon Nelson Mandela was being buried Sunday, an opinion poll showed his political heir Jacob Zuma losing support over claims of self-enrichment.

A survey conducted for the Sunday Times newspaper showed 51 per cent of registered voters of the ruling African National Congress want Zuma to resign as he seemingly battles to fill Mandela’s shoes.

The results of the survey conducted by the Ipsos market research company comes in the same week that Zuma was booed at a memorial service for Mandela in Soweto.

Of the 1,000 ANC voters polled in a representative survey, 33 per cent said they were less likely to vote for the ANC over allegations that Zuma used public money to upgrade his luxury private residence to the tune of some $20 million.

Forty-two per cent said they believed he had abused taxpayer funds.

On Tuesday, South Africans booed their president at a memorial service attended by tens of thousands of people for Mandela, whose legacy is one of selflessness and sacrifice. (READ: They are lunatics, ANC says of those who jeered Zuma)

Many of those who jeered later spoke of their disillusionment and anger at Zuma’s lifestyle at a time that many South Africans remain poor, unemployed, and without formal housing in a society that is among the world’s most unequal.

Zuma’s immediate predecessor Thabo Mbeki, though unpopular at the time of his party ouster by Zuma in 2008, received a warm welcome at the memorial.

Sunday, Zuma said it was incumbent on them to carry on Mandela’s legacy.

“We have to take the legacy forward,” Zuma said in an address to Mandela’s state funeral in the former leader’s boyhood home of Qunu.

“As your journey ends today ours must continue in earnest,” he said.