Former South African president Jacob Zuma says he will not vote for the African National Congress (ANC) and is creating a new political party.
Mr Zuma was the country’s president between 2009 and 2018.
He said it “would be a betrayal” to campaign for the ANC of current President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Mr Zuma’s new party is named uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), meaning spear of the nation, which is the same name as the former armed wing of the ANC.
In an incendiary statement, he said: “The new people’s war starts today. The only crucial difference is instead of the bullet this time we will use the ballot.”
The paramilitary MK, of which Mr Zuma was a member, fought the apartheid-era government of South Africa. It was formally disbanded in 1993 prior to the democratic elections which saw the ANC come to power under Nelson Mandela.
At a news conference in Soweto, Mr Zuma said he was not well enough to speak at length and one of his daughters read a statement on his behalf.
The statement said the ANC was “one of the great liberations movements of our time”, but that it “truly saddens me that the ANC of today is not the once great movement that we loved and were prepared to lay down our lives for”.
“I will die a member of the ANC,” his statement said, but that it had “changed into an organisation we no longer recognise”.
He said some leaders were behaving in an “un-ANC manner” and he intended to “rescue” the organisation.
He said the ANC was expected to lose the elections next year and referred to a “deliberate plot to kill the ANC”. His statement characterised the current government as a failure.
He said President Ramaphosa was a “proxy of white monopoly capital” and that the “ANC of Ramaphosa has declared war against black professionals and intellectuals”.
“I cannot and will not campaign for the ANC of Ramaphosa”.
