Zuma resigns amid corruption allegations

Johannesburg:South African President Jacob Zuma resigned from the position , ending an impasse with his ruling African National Congress (ANC), which was planning to side with Opposition parties in Parliament to remove him via a motion of no confidence.
Zuma’s resignation comes three days after the ANC’s national leadership decided at a marathon meeting in the early hours of Monday to ask him to resign, which he had defiantly refused.
“I resign as President of the Republic (of South Africa) with immediate effect,” Zuma said in a nationally-televised broadcast, ending a nine-year tenure before his second and final term of office which was scheduled to end with national elections in 2019.
But he remained adamant that the decision of the ANC to replace him with Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected in his place as the new President of the ANC two months ago, was “wrong”.
“I disagree with the decision of the leadership of my organisation, (but) I have always been a disciplined member of the organisation,” Zuma said, pledging to continue to serve the political organisation he had joined as a teenager to fight from exile against the minority white apartheid government.
Commenting on the unprecedented possibility of him being removed through action by his own party in Parliament if he did not resign, Zuma said: “I fear no motion of no confidence or impeachment. They are the lawful mechanisms for the people of this beautiful country to remove their president.” Zuma, 75, has previously survived several motions of no confidence by opposition parties in the past.