With Zuma Under Pressure, Police Raid His Allies’ Home

JOHANNESBURG — A day after the African National Congress ordered him to step down as South Africa’s leader, President Jacob Zuma remained defiantly silent Wednesday, prolonging a crisis in the country and inside Africa’s oldest and most storied liberation party.

ANC leaders increased the pressure on Zuma by announcing that if the president did not resign, they would try to remove him through a vote of no confidence in Parliament as early as Thursday. It is the latest in a series of extraordinary moments for the party, which has shielded the president for nearly nine years through a series of scandals and corruption charges.

“The ball is in his court,” Paul Mashatile, the party’s treasurer-general, said at a news conference.

A few hours earlier, Zuma came under pressure on a new front, as police raided the residence in Johannesburg of the Guptas, a family with wide-ranging business interests and close ties to one of the president’s sons and his political allies. Local news outlets reported that three people, including a member of the family, had been arrested as part of a new police inquiry into influence-peddling.

On Wednesday morning, journalists started gathering at the seat of the government in Pretoria, the capital, expecting that Zuma was going to address the nation at 10 a.m. But less than hour before the address was slated to start, his office issued a statement saying that no briefing had been officially scheduled.

The developments, as well as conflicting messages from leaders of the ANC, deepened the uncertainty surrounding Zuma’s future and the paralysis over South Africa’s governing party. It further complicated efforts by Zuma’s presumed successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president, to achieve a smooth transfer of power that would avoid widening fissures inside the party.

At the same time, the events of the previous 24 hours were a clear sign of how much has changed in the two months since Ramaphosa was chosen to succeed Zuma as leader of the ANC, creating what South Africans refer to as the two centers of power. Zuma, seemingly untouchable just a couple of months ago, is now almost certain to lose the presidency, either through a resignation or through a vote in Parliament.

The police investigative unit — which has long been subject to political interference — is now scrutinizing the Guptas, a powerful family who appeared to operate above the law under Zuma’s protection.

Analysts said it was no coincidence that heavily armed police officers had raided the Guptas’ luxury compound and carried out arrests even as Zuma appeared to dither over whether to address the nation. The intended message, they said, was that those closest to Zuma, or even Zuma himself, could be next unless he acceded to the party’s order to quit, well before his term as president was scheduled to expire in mid-2019.

Ace Magashule, the party’s secretary-general and a longtime ally of the president, said that Zuma had been given no deadline. But other high-ranking officials issued stronger warnings.

“Once you resist, we are going to let you be thrown out through the vote of no confidence, because you disrespect the organization and you disobey it,” said Gwede Mantashe, the party’s chairman and an ally of Ramaphosa.

Around noon Wednesday, as Zuma remained silent, ANC officials held a news conference announcing plans for the no-confidence motion. They said they would work with an opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which had already pushed for a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The ANC’s difficult position was on clear display. At a news conference Tuesday at its headquarters in Johannesburg, Magashule — who is third in the party’s hierarchy and who has traditionally acted as its spokesman — struggled to explain why the party was asking for Zuma’s resignation.

Magashule said that the ethical challenges that the president was facing had played no role, saying, “We did not take these decisions because Comrade Jacob Zuma has done anything wrong.”

The reason he gave for the party’s move was that Zuma’s continued presence as the nation’s leader would “erode the renewed hope and confidence among South Africans” since party elections in December, in which Ramaphosa defeated Zuma’s preferred candidate for the ANC leadership.

Magashule indicated that Zuma was hurting the party’s electoral prospects, a point that Ramaphosa’s allies had emphasized. In the 2016 local elections, the ANC lost control over the nation’s biggest cities after it was deserted by traditional supporters disillusioned by Zuma’s conduct; some party officials have since warned that it might face a similar fate in national elections in 2019.