 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today I'm going to talk about the developing story in South Africa where President Jacob Zuma has been asked to resign by African National Congress. To discuss about this and the future of African National Congress, we have a senior journalist from South Africa, Monika. Welcome Monika. Arun, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm well, thank you. So Monika, let's start with the recent something, the developing story with just coming out from South Africa that the influential Gupta family, which is one of the reasons, one of the reasons why Jacob Zuma is in the soup, in the corruption soup. So there had been news that the South African police has raided the Gupta family. Can you say something more about this? Sure. So the Gupta family, I'm not sure if you'll listen, if your readers know much about them, but they're a very influential family in South Africa. They started off quite small in around 2000, the early 2000s with a computer company called Sahara, not of the same Sahara company that's well known in India, of course. There was very little to be known about them in the beginning. They were very low key. And then a few years ago, it was around 2011, I could be mistaken on the date, there was a major story of one of the journalists here in South Africa broke of them using a water cliff air base, which is a military air base to fly in the guest for a wedding that was being held at Sun City. That obviously was where it all began. That opened the can of worms and journalists began probing and investigating the family. It was later discovered that they had infiltrated into all of our state entities, which has now been called state capture. This is later a massive investigation by a public protector, which uncovered that they had major influence on the president, Jacob Zuma, who they wanted to appoint ministers in the cabinet, which included the finance minister. So they wanted to capture treasury. They wanted the minister of enterprise so they could capture ESCEM, which is the state-owned utility provider in South Africa. Also SAA, which is our national carrier, and they were trying to offer, wanted to offer around, I think it was 600 million rent, bribe, not to show what that is in rubies, but they were offering a bribe to one of the ministers because they wanted to cancel the route to India. So they wanted to take control of that as well. So there's many things that they had many fingers in, including mining. They also had, they roped in the president's son, Dujizani Zuma, to be part of that, and other senior ministers and heads of, we call them premiers, because there are different provinces in South Africa. So the head of the province is called the premier. So there was also indication of that as well. So it's been going on for months, and forth was out, there was numerous stories written about them. The latest story, which was last year, the biggest story to come out of them, was when a whole treasure trove of email was leaked to the media. This was thousands, like more than 200,000 emails between the guptas and the senior politicians. Basically, it was a paper trail unraveling the network, and the influence the family had in South Africa. So finally, after many years and the hawks, which is South Africa's elite policing unit, which is similar to the, I would compare them to the FBI and the United States, finally conducted a raid this morning at the compound in Saxon world. A couple of days after the ANC has arsed resignation from Jacob Zuma. Exactly. So the timing is insanely coincidental, if you believe in coincidences. And there are reports as well of there being three arrests, which include a businessman, they say businessman, but reports indicate that it's probably one of the brothers, is probably Athul Gupta. That's been, that's been, that's taken in for questioning. At the same time, while this was happening this morning, the ANC caucus was meeting to discuss President Jacob Zuma's future. As you know, President Zuma has been asked to step down and today he's been given a deadline to resign. If not, the ANC will pass a motion of no confidence in parliament tomorrow. That means he will be impeached or? Well, it's, it's, it's similar to being impeached, but not directly. So you're being recalled. So if you recall, the same thing happened with the president before him, Tabo Mbeke. He was recalled. He was recalled by the party and Tabo Mbeke accepted the record and he stepped on. However, President Zuma, he seemingly refused to resign, which means that no one has to go to parliament and parliament has to make a vote. This is, will be the ninth motion of no confidence that parliament is bringing. He survived eight so far. The opposition party, the EFF had originally brought but now they've decided to sort of step aside and let the ANC do it themselves. So what's going to happen is that they're probably going to, if he does resign today, then the new ANC president, which is Saral Ramaphosa, will then step in as acting president and will have to be voted and sworn in parliament by either tomorrow, but the ANC says they're hoping to push latest by Friday at least. South Africans should wake up to a new president. So maybe the morning news that South Africa will have a new interim president. Is that a possibility? At this stage, anything is possible. I mean, we have no idea. It just, you know, the story is changing from minute to minute to minute. I mean, a lot of people are relying on sources, so a lot of information is coming from sources from within the party who are sitting at this caucus on what's being planned and the scenes behind closed doors in terms of Zuma's refusal to go. And just because of this meeting now, the caucus on the decision made by the ANC, the ran has already improved against the dollar, and it's been better than it has been in two years. It's broken the 12 grandmark, which is unbelievable, which has been unbelievable. So it already shows the impact it's going to have an economy. Just in fact, you learn that the ANC is making this decision. So that means there are very few choices left with Zuma now. He has no choice. His choice is, he has no choice. He, if he doesn't want to resign and bow out like Pertabu and Beki had done at the first time, then all signs indicate that the party is going to, his own party is going to vote him out, which they haven't done before. I mean, he survived nine times. He's basically a cat of nine lives. It's unbelievable. So it's nine lives are actually over. There's no more. The ninth one has been called and he's not going to survive this, which is unbelievable. This has never happened in the history of South Africa's democratic government, which obviously, since 1994, since Nelson Mandela became president. And there's been lots of debate over the ANC survival of the ruling party in South Africa. And as you know, the ANC is a struggle party and a liberation movement. And a lot of credibility has been lost by the party since Zuma has been at the helm of it. I mean, as you know, he's a president of controversy. I mean, there were the rape allegations. He stood trial for that, which she was acquitted. And then there was the corruption charges, which he also escaped. And then also, I mean, the debate was, and he also started appointing people at the head of that, at the head of the judiciary, at the head of the police, at the head of intelligence, basically to do his bidding. All of those people are now being removed. And he's faced one constitutional court challenge after the other. And he's in the last couple of months, he's beginning to slowly, he's slowly beginning to lose power. So, Munika, if Zuma resigns, so most probably it will be Ramaphosa, who will be becoming the president. So what are the prospects for ANC, if Ramaphosa becomes the president, considering that there had been allegations earlier against Ramaphosa, also the incident of killing of 34 mind workers? Yep. So how do you look in this? Well, Ramaphosa is an interesting, I mean, he left, he left the party a couple of years ago, and then he went into business and he went and he made money, and then he came back. Not so long ago, probably about four or five years ago, I'm not just comparing with the deadline. But Ramaphosa economically and for business has a good profile. For the economics of the country, it's good. But in terms of the working class and in terms of the rest of the other sort of voting public, he's not very popular. And it's because of the Marikana incident, which he has apologized for. But I don't know if he can come back on that. He might survive this now because parliament is voting him in. But it will be interesting to see and the ANC will have to work very hard to regain the confidence, would have to regain the support that it's had for the 20 and ahead of the 2019 elections. And I think this is a space now for the opposition parties to do a lot of politics. Well, last question, Monika, is about the Gupta family. So as Zuma falls, what will be the future for Gupta family? That is what everybody wants to know. The Gupta family have, nobody knows how much money they have in this country, but it's probably billions that they've invested. I mean, they've sold their TV station to a former ANC, Jimmy Mani, I mean, a lucrative price, but they had lost their deal now on the satellite network. So they can't run it. So there's probably people who have jobs. They've got a newspaper, which probably wasn't making any money. So they've been pulling people there. So I think the future, they probably will, and they are some African citizens, by the way, they'd be naturalized. So they're proud for that. So I would assume that they would go to trial and people would want them to go to jail. At the end of the day, they would have to face criminal charges. Probably it's going to be a mammoth investigation, probably taking years into uncovering how much money they've laundered. I mean, there's allegedly, I should say, how much money has allegedly been laundered out of the country. I mean, there's a whole connection between them and Dubai and money being filtered through the network being set up there as well. So unless the Guptas have really good lawyers to get out of it, I'm hoping and I think like the rest of the country, we're hoping that this is probably going to finally end and we can finally see some justice. Thank you, Monica, for speaking to NewsClick and we'll follow as the story develops. Thank you for watching NewsClick and please log on to our website, www.newsclick.com. Thank you.