Mmusi Maimane: South Africa opposition leader vows to 'stand up against President Zuma'

Mmusi Maimane, the first black leader of South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance party (DA), is in forceful mood. With next year’s local elections looming, he is about to start a campaign that will highlight allegations of corruption against President Jacob Zuma and his governing ANC party. After months travelling the country since his landslide election as leader in May, next month Mr Maimane will unveil his party’s plan to tackle what he sees as South Africa’s greatest challenge: creating millions of jobs and ending economic stagnation.

“I will focus on a massive campaign that says ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs’,” Mr Maimane told The Independent. Unemployment is running at up to 35 per cent, he says – and he will link the ANC’s failure to the corruption allegations against it that taint South African politics.

“South Africans say, ‘I don’t have a job because the ANC is corrupt,’” says Mr Maimane, referring to claims that ANC councillors responsible for a vast jobs programme only give work to ANC members. “People are starting to say, ‘How is it that jobs are issued on the basis of party affiliation?’”

He will reserve his strongest attack for Mr Zuma himself – who he says has dodged “hundreds” of corruption charges, including those relating to the £11.9m of state funds used to upgrade his private compound at Nklanda. “People are saying this is no longer the ANC of Mandela, but the ANC of Jacob Zuma, one that is epitomised by corruption. We’ve got to make sure that distinction is clear.” Mr Zuma and the ANC deny the allegations.

Mr Maimane says the powers vested in South Africa’s President by the constitution, written in 1994, had Nelson Mandela in mind, and “not a President with 700 charges against him, with power solely on his shoulders to appoint the national police commissioner, the national director of public prosecutions”. These constitutional powers “need to undergo a serious review,” he said.

South African president, Jaco Zuma(Getty)

The DA has applied to join in an action before the Constitutional Court over a critical report on Nklanda by the country’s “public protector” – the official anti-corruption watchdog – this year. That report recommended that Mr Zuma pay back “a reasonable percentage” of public money used for upgrades not connected with security, and the firebrand leftist leader Julius Malema has already gained agreement for a case to be heard in February.

“This is a curtain-raiser to the real showdown with Zuma,” said Mr Maimane. “The wheels of justice move slowly, but boy do they move. We’ve kept the pressure on that issue because we believe ultimately we’ll get to a point where we’ll say, ‘Review the decision to charge Zuma, and ultimately charge him.’”

More broadly, Mr Maimane wants constitutional reform to challenge the ANC patronage, which he says has ensured investigations, such as that into the Marikana mine massacre in 2012, are ineffective.