(Bloomberg) -- The African National Congress met to decide whether to terminate former South African President Jacob Zuma’s party membership, after he campaigned for a rival group in this year’s election.
Zuma, 82, insists he remains an ANC member, even though he led the rival uMkhonto weSizwe Party in the May 29 vote and secured almost 15% of the ballot.
That haul accounted for the bulk of the more than 17 percentage-point drop in the ANC’s support that deprived the party of its parliamentary majority for the first time in three decades.
The ANC’s disciplinary committee has begun the process that will ultimately decide Zuma’s fate, the party said in a statement on Wednesday.
“A verdict will be announced once the committee has received and reviewed all representations,” it said. “We cannot specify the time-line for this process.”
Zuma served as South Africa’s president from 2009 to 2018. While he campaigned for the MK Party, he was barred from running as a candidate himself. The electoral authorities disqualified him over his 2021 conviction of contempt of court, after he refused to testify at an inquiry into the plunder of more than $27 billion of state funds during his presidency.
ANC expulsion, while rare, is not unprecedented and includes that of the party’s former youth league president Julius Malema. He went on to form the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters party, which garnered 10% of the vote in this year’s election.
Zuma is expected to return to parliament on Thursday as a special guest for the first time since his ousting as president in 2018. He has previously boycotted every address by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who succeeded him.
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