Parliament - The Economic Freedom Fighters are conflicted over the vote to impeach President Jacob Zuma as they want to force him out of power, but do not support the grounds put forward by their opposition colleagues in the Democratic Alliance, chief whip Floyd Shivambu said on Tuesday.
As a result, the party had not yet decided how it would vote on the matter in the National Assembly next Tuesday when the motion brought by DA leader Mmusi Maimane on August 4 will be debated.
“We don’t know, we will decide there,” Shivambu said.
Maimane argued that Zuma should be removed from office because as head of the executive he had failed to uphold the law and the Constitution with respect to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s stay in South Africa in June when the latter attended the African Union summit.
Al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges relating to the conflict in Darfur, was allowed to leave the country in violation of a Pretoria High Court order. In a subsequent ruling by a full bench, the same court said it was of concern that the government had defied the order, with Judge President Dunstan Mlambo adding that government’s conduct in failing to arrest al-Bashir was inconsistent with the South African Constitution.
The DA is basing its motion on the argument that Zuma, as head of the executive, carries the responsibility for this, but the EFF does not support the Hague-based tribunal.
“We are of the view anyway that Zuma must go for all his sins. There are lots of reasons to impeach Zuma, and he must be impeached, but not on the basis of al-Bashir,” said Shivambu.
“He is unable to provide economic leadership but on the issue of al-Bashir we are not agreeing with the DA,” he added.
The DA has acknowledged that without the support of the EFF it would not be able to garner the support of one-third of MPs necessary to force the National Assembly to set up an ad hoc committee to consider impeaching the president. It holds 89 seats and needs 134 votes for the motion to pass.
Sources in the party said it planned to meet with the EFF leadership ahead of Tuesday’s vote to try to persuade the second biggest opposition party to back the motion.
Shivambu said the EFF did not feel it could vote against the motion “because we can obviously not vote for the retention of Zuma”, but might consider abstaining.
Speaker Baleka Mbete initially refused to schedule the debate on the basis that the al-Bashir matter was sub judice because government is appealing the court ruling but relented after an exchange of legal letters with the DA.
ANA