AA / Johannesburg / Hasan Isilov
South Africa’s Electoral Commission announced on Thursday that it has disqualified former President Jacob Zuma from running for parliament in the upcoming May 29 election.
The commission said it had notified Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party of the ban from voting in parliament.
The South African constitution does not allow a person sentenced to more than one year in prison to hold public office.
In July 2021, Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court after refusing to appear before a judicial commission investigating allegations of corruption during his nearly ten-year presidency.
However, he was released on medical parole after just two months to serve his sentence under house arrest.
Jacob Zuma, 81, led the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the country for nearly a decade. He announced last December that he would not vote or campaign for the party in the May 2024 election.
The Electoral Commission explained that Jacob Zuma has until April 2 to appeal his ineligibility.
In January, the ANC banned party member Jacob Zuma for 60 years, another sign of the growing rift between him and current president Cyril Ramaphosa.
This week the ANC lost a court case seeking to dissolve the Zuma-backed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.
The ANC, which has ruled South Africa for three decades, has taken the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party and the Electoral Commission to court, arguing that the newly formed party did not meet the necessary conditions when it was registered in September last year.
The ANC alleges that Masego Sheburi, the deputy chief of electoral staff, acted illegally when the party was registered.
Analysts say the May election could be a turning point for South Africa, where the ANC could find itself without a majority for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994.
The ANC, which freed South Africans from the yoke of the white minority and racial segregation, has won more than 60% in every election since 1994, except in 2019, when its parliamentary share fell to 57.5%.
It currently has 230 seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, which has 400 members elected by a party-list proportional representation system.
*Translated from English by Alex Sinhan Bogmis
Source: AA
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