NELSPRUIT, South Africa (Reuters) – South African President Jacob Zuma announced a crackdown on corruption on Saturday, presenting his ruling ANC’s manifesto for elections this year that will give the party its toughest political test since the end of apartheid.
Zuma, who has ruled Africa’s biggest economy since 2009 and himself faces allegations of graft and abuse of power, announced the measures at a packed African National Congress (ANC) rally in the eastern province of Mpumalanga.
Two decades after South Africa’s first multi-racial ballot won by Nelson Mandela, who died last month, the 102-year-old liberation movement is fighting to counter an erosion of voter support in presidential and legislative elections.
This threat comes from popular anger over persisting poverty and high unemployment in one of the most unequal societies in the world.
The ANC is still tipped to win the elections expected in April, when Zuma will stand for a second term as president.
However, criticism its leaders including Zuma are more interested in enriching themselves than in lifting up South Africa’s struggling poor and jobless, have dented the party’s self-projected role as the champion of the working class.
Zuma, who was booed in public last month at a memorial to Mandela, made a point of pledging the anti-corruption drive when he presented the ANC’s 2014 elections manifesto to a partisan crowd in a soccer stadium in the city of Nelspruit.
