By Kopano Gumbi
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -Protesters disrupted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s opening speech at the ruling party’s conference on Friday to elect their leaders, preventing him from starting and forcing him to shout to be heard over the din.
Delegates from the governing African National Congress (ANC) are electing party leaders from Friday until Tuesday, including their presidential candidate for the next nationwide elections due in 2024.
Ramaphosa is contesting the party ticket in the five-day conference, after he avoided impeachment proceedings over a scandal dubbed “Farmgate” involving millions of dollars found stashed in sofas at his private farm.
Outside the meeting hall in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa’s opponents sang: “Out, Ramaphosa, out!”
Inside, when Ramaphosa took the stage rival factions both sang songs and his opponents refused to stop singing for several minutes despite him asking them to quieten down, forcing him to start speaking while trying to ignore the chanting.
“This is not the time to display this type of disorderly behaviour,” Ramaphosa said, as his speech was interrupted.
“This does not bode well for the ANC.”
Ever since Nelson Mandela won in South Africa’s first free elections in 1994, the leader of his legacy ANC party has de facto become president of the country.
Those seeking to oust Ramaphosa are mostly loosely allied to ex-president Jacob Zuma, who is being investigated for allowing three Indian businessman to capture state funds during his tenure between 2009 and 2018 – charges he denies.
Voters, meanwhile, are also furious over joblessness, poor service delivery and worsening power shortages.
Last year the ANC saw its share of the vote drop below 50% for the first time in municipal polls, a major psychological blow and harbinger of what could be in store in the 2024 vote.
Ramaphosa called “upon all of us as delegates to this conference to pursue with greater vigour the rebuilding and renewal of the ANC and as a united movement, to advance the fundamental transformation of our economy.”
Ramaphosa is still seen as the ANC’s best chance of reviving its flagging popularity, but that by no means assures he will win the ANC ticket.
His closest rival is Zweli Mkhize, allied to Zuma’s faction. Mkhize was the minister of health until Ramaphosa put him on special leave last year in the wake of allegations that his department irregularly awarded COVID-19-related contracts to a communications company controlled by his former associates.
Mkhize denies wrongdoing.
(Reporting by Kopano Gumbi; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by James Macharia Chege and Hugh Lawson)
