President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday survived a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly, but the result indicated that a significant number of African National Congress (ANC) MPs broke ranks to support the opposition motion.

Speaker Baleka Mbete announced that 177 MPs voted in favour of the motion and 198 against it. There were nine abstentions.

“Therefore the vote of no confidence in the president is accordingly negated,” Mbete said.

Mbete had, in an eleventh hour decision, allowed voting by secret ballot, which in all likelihood emboldened ruling party MPs to defy a three-line whip and vote in favour of the motion.

A total of 384 votes were cast by the 400-member chamber.

The result suggests that at least 26 of the ruling party’s 249 members voted with the opposition, who had taken pains to portray their motion as an attempt to dislodge a weak and unpopular president, not an assault on the ANC.

But ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa insisted after the outcome was announced that the opposition had tried to overthrow government.

“This is democracy in action. We have never doubted… this motion was never about President Jacob Zuma, it was about collapsing government.”  

He brushed away questions about the significance of the slim margin by which the motion failed.

“At the end what counts is outcomes.”

Kodwa said Zuma was on his way to address supporters outside Parliament. Tuesday marked the eight opposition bid to use parliamentary process to oust him from office.

ANC MPs did a victory dance between the benches of the chamber moments before Mbete announced the official result, while Police Minister Fikile Mbalula broke the news to a large crowd of ANC supporters outside Parliament.

The motion was triggered by Zuma’s dismissal of trusted finance minister Pravin Gordhan, who was one of four ANC MPs who signalled in the run-up to the vote that he would vote according to conscience.

United Democratic Movement (UDM) leader Bantu Holomisa, who went to the Constitutional Court in a bid to force a secret ballot, said the opposition would ratchet up pressure on the president despite losing the day.

“It went to the wire because there are only 11 votes that divide us,” Holomisa said.

Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane said it was significant that a number of ANC MPs had been prepared to join forces with the opposition to force Zuma out of office.

“Members of the ANC and the opposition stood together to say Zuma must go. He is, in fact, a dead president walking and he must go,” he said.

“Today is a pyrrhic victory for the ANC, they have shown that they will stand together to defend corruption.”
Academic and political analyst Richard Calland said the ANC’s victory would prove shortlived because the party’s woes were confirmed by a “not insignificant” number of its members casting their ballots with the opposition camp.