Pretoria - There was furious jockeying for the upper hand on Monday in Irene, Pretoria, where the ANC NEC was meeting to decide whether Jacob Zuma should be recalled as president of South Africa.
On Monday morning, both camps - those in support of the motion of no confidence in Zuma, brought by Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom, and those against - were confident of victory.
A source in the anti-Zuma camp said if it went to a vote, they would be eight ahead while an insider in the pro-Zuma lobby believed they would be four votes ahead.
However, the pro-Zuma camp was trying to avoid a vote at all costs because they believed decisions in the NEC should be settled by consensus.
The strategy of ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s camp, which wants Zuma removed as president of the republic, was to get all those in the NEC who were against Zuma to speak on Monday to demonstrate their opposition, a source said. At the end of Monday one of them would rise to ask Zuma to step down and the Mantashe camp was confident he would be gone if it went to a vote.
The pro-Zuma camp was trying to stop the matter going to a vote at all costs and had earlier indicated it was against the secret ballot proposed by the no-confidence backers. Although they believe they will scrape in narrowly if there was a vote.
The NEC can only recall Zuma as SA president but not as the president of the ANC because it was the branches that elected a party president.
The Mantashe camp insider said if they didn't succeed in removing Zuma by the end of the day it would lobby for an urgent Parliamentary session to vote with the opposition in a motion of no confidence in Zuma.
The source said if Zuma moved to reshuffle the cabinet to punish those who spoke or voted against him, “they would humiliate him” in Parliament.
The plan was for deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa to be appointed as interim president of the republic almost immediately if Zuma was ousted.
The source also said the first move of the anti-Zuma group was to act against the Guptas in line with the Public Protector's State of Capture report.
The NEC was extended to Monday after Hanekom's motion.
IOL