* Malema may try to use local support to rattle Zuma
* Showdown could come at ANC elections next year
By Jon Herskovitz
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 20 (Reuters) – South African
firebrand Julius Malema was elected to a senior African National
Congress post in his home province on Tuesday, in a boost to his
troubled career and a sign of local support within the ruling
party.
An ANC disciplinary panel in November found Malema guilty of
bringing the 99-year-old liberation movement into disrepute, and
expelled him for five years. The 30-year-old has appealed the
suspension and is allowed to stay in the party pending a
decision.
If he loses the appeal, the ANC election to the party’s
executive committee for the Limpopo province would be merely
symbolic. He faces being stripped of the post and also of his
leadership of the ANC’s Youth League.
But the vote result does send a message to his adversary,
President Jacob Zuma, that Malema may try to rally support from
his home base to shake up a major ANC meeting next year when the
party elects its leader, analysts said.
“It is a sign that Mr. Malema and his allies are not going
to roll over and accept the authority of Luthuli House (the
ANC’s headquarters)… without a fight,” Business Day newspaper
said in an editorial.
Malema, a power broker who helped Zuma rise to power at the
ANC’s last electoral meeting in 2007, has increasingly crossed
swords with the president, mocking him in public at the weekend.
Continued…
