Cyril Ramaphosa says he will not appoint people who work ‘to fill their own pockets’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

South Africa’s president has vowed to purge his party of “bad and deviant tendencies” as he prepares to appoint a new cabinet following victory in the national elections.

The 57% share of the vote was the worst ever election showing for the African National Congress, which has ruled since the end of the apartheid system of racial discrimination 25 years ago.

Low voter turnout of 65% in the 8 May election also reflected the frustration of many South Africans after corruption scandals around the ANC that led the former president Jacob Zuma to resign last year under party pressure. Turnout was 74% in 2014.

In his first speech to supporters since the election win, Cyril Ramaphosa said he would not appoint leaders who worked “to fill their own pockets”.

He told thousands of supporters in downtown Johannesburg: “We are going to end corruption whether they like it or not.” The revelations by a government commission investigating graft, often aired live on television for fascinated South Africans, “must be things of the past”, the president said.

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Ramaphosa urged ANC leaders not to air the party’s “dirty linen in public” and said the party must be renewed “so that we cleanse it of all the bad and deviant tendencies”.

Among those celebrating the election result was Tlaleng Radebe, 45, an ANC member from Soweto township on the outskirts of Johannesburg. “Ramaphosa has done the right thing by targeting corruption. It helped us win the election,” she said.

Another ANC member, Themba Shabalala, 39, said he wanted to see Ramaphosa, a union leader turned business tycoon, rid the country of the “scourge of unemployment”.

About 27% of South Africans do not have jobs, according to one definition of unemployment.