South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma staged a surprise comeback at the head of an upstart party that is only a few months old but already the country’s third largest.
Zuma is 82, he was banned from standing in this week’s general election because of a contempt conviction and his former rule is synonymous with the capture of the state by corrupt interests.
But at the reins of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), a party founded barely eight months ago, he has taken a huge chunk out of the once untouchable ANC’s majority and stormed his home province.
On Friday afternoon, with 60 percent of the votes counted, Zuma’s MK was leading the ANC by 43 percent to 18 in the electoral battle ground province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), a huge pool of votes.
In the national race, the newcomers had more than 12 percent, putting them in third behind the ANC, whose vote collapsed from more than 57 percent in 2019 to 42 percent on Wednesday, and…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
