Cape Town — President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is being forced out of office early after a bitter struggle with his rival and successor, Jacob Zuma, over the fallout from a U.S.$5 billion arms deal.
Shortly after Mbeki's party, the African National Congress (ANC), announced on Saturday that it had decided to "recall" him, South Africa's presidency released a statement saying "the president has obliged and will step down after all constitutional requirements have been met."
Mbeki's second and final five-year term was scheduled to expire only next April.
Neither the party nor Mbeki has given any clear roadmap indicating when Mbeki will resign, who will replace him or how long the process will take. Party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told a televised news conference that South Africa's constitution was "silent" on what happened when a president stepped down.
South African presidents are elected by parliament, normally at the time a new government is constituted after an election. Mantashe said parliament would now have to "look at the formula" and "develop" a system for handling the situation.
He also said the party had opted not to use the sections of the constitution under which parliament could either pass a formal vote of no confidence in Mbeki or remove him from office. It wanted instead to "try to resolve the problem politically."
The roots of the crisis over Mbeki's leadership, and his party's loss of confidence in him, lie in allegations of bribery and corruption around the arms deal. The controversy has, in the words of a high court judge last week, become a "cancer that is devouring the body politic and the reputation for integrity built up so assiduously after the fall of apartheid."
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The judge was delivering judgement in a case in which prosecutors accused Zuma of corruption arising from the arms deal. Zuma's supporters accuse Mbeki of carrying out a vendetta against Zuma.
Mantashe made it clear at the news conference that the decision to recall Mbeki had been prompted by fear that he, his cabinet and prosecutors would try to reverse a finding by the judge which suggested that cabinet ministers - and by inference Mbeki - had improperly influenced prosecutors in Zuma's case.
Mantashe said prosecutors and the cabinet had been "hitting at the core issues" when they announced this week they wanted to contest the finding. The party wanted to ensure that "contestations" within the party were minimised. "We are trying to bring back stability and certainty," he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this report said the arms deal was worth $30 billion. The figure should have read R30 billion (at the 1999 value of the South African Rand) or $5 million.
