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'Zunami' to swamp Durban this Friday for South African ex-president's trial

Momentum has been building this week for a mass overnight vigil and protest in support of South Africa's sacked president Jacob Zuma when he faces trial on decades-old corruption charges this Friday.
Loyal members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will converge on the Indian Ocean port of Durban, the capital of Mr Zuma's home province of KwaZulu Natal, on Thursday for an overnight vigil, followed by an early morning “Hands Off Zuma” march from three protest camps to the High Court.
Rehearsals for Friday's protest march earlier this week
National organisations and rank-and-file ANC cadres have pledged support for the popular former president, whose nicknames include Msholozi (his clan name), Nxamalala (his birthplace), uBaba (our father) and Mshini Wami (Bring Me My Machine Gun), the struggle song with which Mr Zuma drives rallies wild.
They include the Black Land First campaign, the National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs along with the ANC's Women's League and Youth League.
They say vindictive “White Monopoly Capital” (WMC) is behind a witch-hunt against Mr Zuma, whose nine years as president threatened the dominance of Western business interests.
Supporters are organising through social media platforms like Twitter, WhatsApp and Telegram, with t-shirts, stickers and car magnets emblazoned with slogans like “100% behind Msholozi” and "WMC must fall" being produced in print shops across the country. Buses have been booked to bring demonstrators to Durban from other provinces.
"It is a matter of concern that for all these years Zuma has been subjected to what appears to be a well-calculated campaign to isolate him,” Bishop Bheki Ngcobo told a press conference on Wednesday. “Could it be that Zuma is targeted because he has always been on the side of the poor? Could it be that Zuma is targeted because he preferred free education for the poor?"
Mr Zuma resigned in February at the request of the ANC's National Executive Committee (NEC), just two months on from the December party conference which elected vice-president Cyril Ramaphosa as its new leader ahead of the 2019 general election. That followed two years of media allegations that he was in the pocket of the Gupta business family. 
Mr Zuma's opponents claim, without evidence, that he has long demanded his “day in court” to face the decade-old charges. Police Minister Bheki Cele, a Zuma appointee, urged his former boss and his supporters to “leave the ANC alone” this week. “If you commit crimes you must face the charges without calling the ANC to defend you,” he said, implying the former president had personally organised the protest as a challenge to the party leadership.
Mr Zuma's son Edward hit back on Tuesday, denying the Zuma family had anything to do with the events. “It is people of South Africa who correctly believe that they need to support the former president Jacob Zuma as it’s clear that the witch-hunt against JZ is being intensified from all corners and levels,” he said. “As a member of the ANC myself‚ I shall be attending court in my own ANC shirt.”
The ANC-allied South African Communist Party will not be supporting Mr Zuma as it did in 2007 and 2008, its general secretary — and Mr Ramaphosa's transport minister — Blade Nzimande said this week. 
Renegade Ramaphosa
Billionaire Mr Ramaphosa's interim government has already made itself unpopular raised VAT, fuel duty and road tolls and threatened to lay off tens of thousands of civil servants. On Wednesday a negotiating committee of public sector trade unions threatened to strike over the government's stalling in pay negotiations.
Mr Ramaphosa has also reneged on the ANC conference resolution to nationalise the South African Reserve Bank and turn it towards national development, and watered down another resolution on redistributing land to the black majority to only include low-value state-owned property. 
The new president has even alienated the powerful, ANC-allied National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), of which he is a former general secretary and which supported his bid for the presidency. That was after Energy Minister  Jeff Radebe — Mr Ramaphosa's brother-in-law via the super-wealthy Motsepe family — signed 27 contracts worth 1.4 trillion rand with expensive and untested renewable energy providers, including US firm Solar Reserve.
In a Wednesday statement the NUM said the deals, which will replace coal-fired power stations and a planned nuclear power plant which Russia's Rosatom was bidding to build, would cost 40,000 mining jobs. It called Radebe a “communist turned capitalist,” adding the NUM was “not going to continue supporting the ANC-led government that is destroying jobs.”
Historical allegations
The charges against Mr Zuma relate to a massive 1997 government arms purchase from French company Thint, alleging he received kickbacks in return for facilitating the deal. However, the ex-president was not even in the national government at the, but was the member of the KZN provincial legislature for economy and tourism.
He was charged on December 28 2007, just weeks after he defeated incumbent Thabo Mbeki in the election for president of the ANC — and 2009 election candidate — at the party's national congress. 
The trial collapsed on September 12 2008 after the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions made the latest of several requests for a postponement as they were not ready to make their case. In his ruling, Judge Chris Nicholson said the prosecution was driven by a “baleful political influence.” Nine days later, Mr Mbeki resigned after the ANC NEC withdrew its support for him. 
Mr Zuma has been jailed before — for fighting against the former apartheid regime.  He spent ten years in the notorious Robben Island prison from 1963 for his membership of the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, Spear of the Nation) and the South African Communist Party.

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