ANC Tells Zuma to Step Down as President

JOHANNESBURG — Top leaders of South Africa’s governing party ordered President Jacob Zuma to step down Tuesday, saying that his continued presence was eroding the “new hope” felt since the election of new party leaders in December.

In a meeting with party leaders Monday night, Zuma was defiant, insisting that he had done nothing wrong and refusing to resign, according to the local news media.

The confrontation between Zuma and the African National Congress — the party that had backed him throughout a scandal-plagued presidency until recently — heightened a power struggle that has paralyzed South Africa, which has the continent’s most powerful economy, in the past week.

The drawn-out negotiations over Zuma’s future have cast a pall over the optimism that followed Cyril Ramaphosa’s election in December as leader of the ANC. Although Ramaphosa, deputy president since 2014, has a mixed record in both politics and business, he has spoken against corruption and is allied with ANC officials with reputations as reformers.

The ANC’s decision to recall Zuma culminated a week of high-level party meetings and direct talks that failed to resolve the impasse between Zuma and Ramaphosa. Seeking to avoid a confrontation that could deepen a party split, Ramaphosa had pressed Zuma to resign voluntarily.

Under the constitution, Parliament selects the president, effectively putting the decision in the hands of the ANC’s top leaders. Ramaphosa’s allies have argued that Zuma should step down as soon as possible to give Ramaphosa, as his successor, enough time to rebuild the party before national elections in 2019.

The party’s decision came hours after a marathon meeting of its top leaders in the national executive committee at a hotel in Pretoria, the capital. The meeting started Monday afternoon and lasted into Tuesday’s predawn hours, as the party’s leaders tried to agree on a way to handle Zuma.

Around midnight, Ramaphosa’s motorcade was seen making its way to Zuma’s residence, where Ramaphosa directly asked for the president’s resignation, according to the local news media. After the president is said to have refused, Ramaphosa’s motorcade returned to the hotel where, in a tense meeting over the next few hours, Ramaphosa pushed members of the executive committee to formally demand that the president step down.

At an ANC conference in December, Ramaphosa was elected to lead the party. But his margin of victory over Zuma’s chosen successor was slim, indicating the deep party split and presaging the difficulties he would face in pressing Zuma to step down as the nation’s leader before his term expires in mid-2019.