The much anticipated meeting of the ruling African National Congress' national executive committee to decide the fate of embattled state president Jacob Zuma has now been put out to next week.
The ANC NEC had been set to meet in Cape Town on Wednesday on the eve of the State of the Nation (SONA) address in Parliament, but on a momentous day in South African politics, Parliament announced that Thursday's SONA had been postponed.
The ANC on Tuesday night announced that its NEC meeting had been pushed out to the weekend of February 17-18, just days before the scheduled Budget Speech in Parliament.
Earlier Tuesday, ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte, who was introducing the new ANC spokesman Pule Mabe, told reporters in Johannesburg that a binding collective decision will be made by the NEC on the fate of Zuma at a meeting in Cape Town on Wednesday.
Zuma has thus far resisted calls by his own party to step down as head of state, opening the way for a no-confidence vote or possible impeachment, while a decision on reinstating hundreds of decade-old corruption and racketeering charges is pending.
The announcement by Speaker Baleka Mbete of the postponement of SONA comes amid rising calls for Zuma to step down and to not deliver SONA, both from within his own party and the opposition, who have in recent years disrupted the state of the nation in protest at Zuma's presence amid myriad scandals of corruption and state capture.
Standing on the steps outside the National Assembly, Mbete said: "We have been dismayed in the past four years at the disruption, anarchy and chaos that have been characteristic of this annual Joint Sitting which, in some way, marks the opening of Parliament.
"Reporting through Parliament on the State of the Nation is a critical accountability action by the Executive and it must happen. Developments this year, particularly the calls for disruption and/or postponement of the Joint Sitting, have, therefore, caused us great concern.
"We have, regrettably, come to the conclusion that there is little likelihood of an uneventful Joint Sitting of Parliament this coming Thursday."
Mbete said that with these concerns in mind, Parliament had decided to approach Zuma to propose the postponement "in order to create room for establishing a much more conducive political atmosphere in Parliament".
"When we met the President, we then learnt that he was already writing to Parliament to ask for the postponement of SONA."
Mbete said a new date for SONA would be announced soon.
- African News Agency (ANA)
