The former partner of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko today accused South African president Jacob Zuma and the ANC of being “authoritarian, intolerant and unaccountable”.
Academic and businesswoman Mamphea Ramphele announced that she was setting up a new party to contest next year’s elections. She said that almost 20 years after Nelson Mandela was elected president the country was still “hurt and divided”.
Launching her Building South Africa Together party, she said: “South Africa is a rich country but its people are being impoverished. We have allowed an incumbent to rule as though they are the owners of the country rather than governing as servants of the people.”
Dr Ramphele, 65, is a highly respected figure who trained as a doctor and fell in love with Mr Biko when they met as student activists in the Seventies. They both married other people but continued their affair over a number of years.
Both were repeatedly detained without trial or put under house arrest for their part in anti-apartheid protests. Dr Ramphele was pregnant with their son and due to marry Mr Biko when he was beaten to death in police custody in 1977. She moved to the US to teach at Harvard University but returned to South Africa and in 1996 became the first black vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town.
Speculation that she was preparing to make a move into politics has been mounting for weeks as she resigned from her positions on the boards of several companies and held talks with the opposition Democratic Alliance party. She said her party would focus on restructuring the economy, improving education and “empowering the people to govern”.
The ANC had been expected to win next year’s elections but Dr Ramphele’s entrance could challenge its hold on power, against a background of
rampant corruption, violence against women and a 40 per cent poverty rate.
