Only five months after starting a new political party‚ African Democratic Change ( ADeC) leader Makhosi Khoza has resigned from politics.

The former ANC MP on Saturday announced her decision to leave the party she had started on Facebook.

“I thought I should make my announcement public about retirement from politics.

“As the leading founder of ADeC and its director of its Non-Profit Organisation (NPO)‚ I therefore resign from both structures and authorise the ADeC National Board under the chairmanship of Moses Mayekiso to liaise with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the other directors of the non-profit organisations to fill the vacant position as a result of my resignation and stepping down from politics.”

The party was launched in December and was supposed to focus on the quality of Ubuntu and unemployment. “I don’t know of any other party that has ever unpacked the philosophy of Ubuntu‚" she said in December.

In March‚ members of ADeC called for her resignation as she didn’t recognise the party’s newly elected interim leadership.

She also expelled leaders Lufuno Gogoro and Mpho Ramakatsa which angered other members.

On Saturday‚ in her resignation letter she explained she wants to work with her son‚ a computer programmer‚ to give African languages "prestige" and "prosperity".

"One’s mother tongue is not just a communication tool but‚ the engine [of] one’s logic and intelligence.... It is a calamity of despicable proportions that a black African-led government claiming to be the liberator has dismally failed to position and develop black African languages as those of prestige and prosperity."

In an unclear statement she said she was working with Zulu and maths‚ and with her son who had developed an algorithm.

"Retiring from politics means I will work with all citizens irrespective of their political affiliations. As made explicitly clear‚ my mission is apolitical. It will therefore be an antithesis if I was to be associated with a particular political party."

She had been an outspoken member of the ANC - in 2017 asking members to join a vote of no confidence in Jacob Zuma.

She was fired from her parliamentary job by Zuma last August.

Read her full statement: https://www.facebook.com/makhosibusisiwe.khoza/posts/10211973135018893

- TimesLIVE</s>Founder of the African Democratic Change (ADeC) party and outspoken ex-ANC MP Makhosi Khoza has announced her retirement from politics.

In a letter published on Facebook addressing ADeC's leadership on Saturday, Khoza said she had taken a "well-thought through decision" to step down from politics in pursuit of her "bigger mission in life".

"I feel time has come for me to pursue... my bigger mission... beyond the confines of politics and political parties," Khoza wrote.

READ: Makhosi Khoza Says Her Party Will Win The Election Through Honesty And Morality

Writing that a "very promising potential opportunity has arisen" for the former parliamentarian and stern critic of the governing party, Khoza said she would turn her attention to local governance and administration, education and elevation of African languages.

In justifying her departure and shift to other work, Khoza decried the poor state of development of African languages and education, saying she wanted to contribute to their betterment. "It is a calamity of despicable proportions that a black African-led government claiming to be the liberator has dismally failed to position and develop black African languages as those of prestige and prosperity," she wrote.

Khoza said she had, in response to this context, created an isiZulu language mathematical logic series and dictionary 'UZALO' which she would table to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Education and others. She and her son Mlando -- a computer programmer finalising an algorithm based on her work -- had decided to "join forces in the elevation of black languages," she added.

The ex-ANC MP stressed her work required her to be 'apolitical', hence her decision to step down from ADeC, a party she formed in December following her admonishment of, and departure from, the ANC.

In the interim, ADeC has appeared to flounder since its creation, and by March had reportedly been marred by infighting and expulsions, although Khoza denied these reports.

In her letter to ADeC on Saturday, Khoza said she wished the party well:

"I also hope that ADeC would continue with its Politics Unusual concept, its commitment to the total emancipation of women, loyalty to the South African citizens and ensuring that at all times it is grounded in moral and ethical leadership," she wrote.

Khoza in September broke down in tears as she announced she would resign from the ANC.

"I tried to serve with honour, and dignity, the best I could... I am joining the people who want to protect this country," she said at a media briefing in Rivonia.

"Standing here today, I tell you I am taking with me the good ANC I know...As I break my silence, against the deceit of the ANC, I do so in defence of all men, women who fought for this country...I want to make it unequivocally clear: I am not joining the Democratic Alliance."

She labelled the ruling party as an "alien and corrupt" organisation that did not value or respect intellectual women."</s>The African Democratic Change (ADeC) political party has on Sunday welcomed the resignation of its former president Makhosi Khoza, slamming her "dictatorial" leadership.

"We register our displeasure and disappointment in the manner in which Makhosi Khoza dragged the process," said acting spokesperson Bongani Masilela in a statement.

READ: Makhosi Khoza Retires From Politics Just Months After New Party Formed

"Makhosi Khoza had presented herself as the supreme leader of the party by making dictatorial decisions which had put the party into disrepute.

"She has done and said things that were out of context to those of the party and its nature, presenting herself to be above the organisation."

The party still wanted to carry out the disciplinary hearing of all charged members on Monday, April 23 before dealing with the IEC registration process, and also needed to do away with the party's so-called Non-Profit Organisation.

REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko Makhosi Khoza gestures during an interview with Reuters in Johannesburg, South Africa, July 18,2017.

The party also said that her resignation signalled "a new dawn" for ADeC.

"We wish to send a message to all media houses and all South Africans to grow and move away from the belief that a political party belongs to an individual."

Instead, the party was registered with the IEC and therefore remained "public property".

The party then wished Khoza well.

"Makhosi Khoza still has a lot to offer South Arica and [we] wish her well her future endeavours."

On Saturday, Khoza, who resigned from the ANC last year and formed the ADeC, announced that she was retiring from politics for a new opportunity.

"I feel time has come for me to pursue and fulfill my bigger mission in this life as outlined in the opening paragraph above. My bigger mission is beyond the confines of politics and political parties," she wrote on Facebook.

She will be joining her son in developing algorithms for African languages.

Last month, an intense battle for the control of Khoza's new party came to light, with Thokozani Msomi, who claimed to be the party's deputy president, saying that Khoza had been suspended for bringing the party into disrepute.

Msoni's statement said the decision to suspend Khoza came following a communication breakdown, and she would be facing a disciplinary hearing.

ADeC's spokesperson Feziwe Ndwayana at the time denied the suspension, saying those behind the call for Khoza to be suspended were not recognised as members of the party.

Khoza rose to prominence as a member of Parliament, serving on both the SABC inquiry as well as the ad hoc committee that elected a new Public Protector.

She was also vocal opponent of former president Jacob Zuma - which saw members of the portfolio committee she chaired demand she be removed prior to her resignation from the ANC.</s>JOHANNESBURG - The African Democratic Change (ADeC) says its acknowledges the decision by Dr Makhosi Khoza to step down as the party leader, adding that they would like to thank her for providing what they call a political vehicle that advocates for change in South Africa.

In a statement released on Saturday afternoon, the four-month-old political party says it remains committed to the fulfillment of the founding principles that led to its establishment.

Spokesperson Sinakho Nqoma says despite Khoza's resignation, the party remains determined as ever.

“We respect and acknowledge her resignation from politics, we’re very grateful for her contribution as she has contributed highly to the vehicle which is ADeC for change. But the party as is still remains.”

Khoza mentioned that she will be leaving to devote her efforts to youth development.

Nqoma says that this is something she has always held close to her heart.

“She has made it known that those projects are a priority for her and that is what she has decided to take on fulltime.”</s>The African Democratic Change (ADeC) will survive‚ even as it accepts founder Makhosi Khoza’s resignation‚ its new leader‚ Moses Mayekiso, said.

Former ANC MP Khoza founded ADeC in December. In her resignation letter published on Saturday‚ she handed over the leadership to Mayekiso.

Mayekiso said the party would not collapse without its most well-known member.

He said the party’s national council had accepted Khoza’s resignation and would support her endeavours moving forward.

“Makhosi has left a legacy and we thank her for what she has left and we will survive.”

Mayekiso claimed the party had 30 000 individual members as well as various civic organisations that were joining it.

“We honoured her [on Saturday] for the opportunity she gave us by setting up the organisation.

“She is a life member. She is a mentor,” he said.

After more than 35 years in the ANC‚ Khoza urged members to vote against then president Jacob Zuma in a vote of no confidence. She was then fired from her parliamentary job by Zuma in August and resigned from the ANC in September.

She started ADeC using the ANC’s green‚ gold and black colours in her party’s logo.

The ANC accused of her of trying to trick voters into voting for her party by creating a logo and name that could be confused with the ANC on the ballot paper.

ADeC was rocked with infighting last month when two members‚ Lufuno Gogoro and Mpho Ramakatsa‚ were expelled.

The two also claimed they had suspended Khoza from her own party.

On Saturday, in her resignation letter she explained she wanted to work with her son‚ a computer programmer‚ to give African languages prestige and prosperity.

She said she had developed a Zulu mathematics dictionary. She also wanted to spend more time with her family. – TimesLIVE</s>JOHANNESBURG - Former African National Congress (ANC) Member of Parliament and leader of newly-formed political party African Democratic Change (ADeC) Makhosi Khoza has announced that she will be retiring from politics.

Khoza caused a stir in the ANC last year when she was vocal about former president Jacob Zuma, calling for him to step down publicly on various occasions.

Following her departure from the ANC, Khoza formed ADeC but will be stepping down from her position as leader.

Khoza says she will be trying her hand in local governance, working with different parties to fight corruption within the sector.

She says a conversation she had with the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela a few months ago about her political future sparked her change of heart.

“Her death made reflect honestly about where I could be more impactful in society and I have decided that I’m going to focus more on local government and administration.”

Khoza says languages in the education sector is also something she wants to focus on.

“I’d also focus on the innovation of black African languages, especially at they impact negatively on mathematics and science in South Africa.”</s>The African Democratic Change (ADeC) “will survive"‚ even as it accepts founder Makhosi Khoza’s resignation‚ says the party’s new leader‚ Moses Mayekiso.

Former ANC MP Khoza founded ADeC in December. In her resignation letter published on Saturday‚ Khoza handed over the party leadership to Mayekiso.

Mayekiso said the party would not collapse without its most well-known member. “We will be fine.”

He said the party's national council had accepted “Khoza’s resignation and would support her endeavours moving forward”.

“Makhosi has left a legacy and we thank her for what she has left and we will survive.”

Mayekiso claimed the party had 30‚000 individual members as well as various civic organisations that were joining it. “This is an organisation based on people on the ground and its mission and vision.”

He said Khoza would remain an honorary member.

“We honoured her [on Saturday] for the opportunity she gave us by setting up the organisation. She is an honorary member of our movement. She is a life member. She is mentor.”</s>Only five months after starting a new political party‚ African Democratic Change (ADeC) leader Makhosi Khoza has resigned from politics.

The former ANC MP on Saturday announced her decision to leave the party on Facebook.

“I thought I should make my announcement public about retirement from politics.

“As the leading founder of ADeC and its director of its Non-Profit Organisation (NPO)‚ I therefore resign from both structures and authorise the ADeC National Board under the chairmanship of Moses Mayekiso to liaise with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the other directors of the non-profit organisations to fill the vacant position as a result of my resignation and stepping down from politics.”

The party was launched in December and was supposed to focus on the quality of Ubuntu and unemployment. “I don’t know of any other party that has ever unpacked the philosophy of Ubuntu‚” she said in December.</s>DURBAN - Barely four months after the formation and launch of former ANC MP Makhosi Khoza's African Democratic Change (ADeC) was officially formed, its leader and founder has announced her retirement from politics.

Khoza will step down from all structures of the party immediately.

She made the announcement on Facebook on Saturday in a letter addressed to ADeC's party's chairperson Moses Mayekiso.

In the letter, Khoza said she had taken a "well-thought" decision to step down from politics with immediate effect in pursuit and in fulfillment of her deepest passion.

"Once in one’s lifetime, potential opportunities arise. This is exactly what has happened to me. A very promising potential opportunity has arisen for me to really add maximum value to the entire local governance and administration fields in South Africa and possibly the entire African continent. I have always wanted to put my post graduate qualifications especially my doctoral degree in Quality Management Principles and Systems (QMPS) in developmental local governance and extensive experience in local government into use and in a manner that would deliver maximum positive impact to local citizens. Local government is the closest sphere of government to the people, yet it has been neglected. In South Africa, local government is riddled with corruption, patronage politics, poor and appalling municipal services resulting in extremely frustrated local citizens.

South Africa is in an atrocious state of education and the continued disgraceful, shameful, reprehensible and discreditable stunting of African languages. The black indigenous languages account for 79% of the South African population according to Statistics South Africa, 2011, yet they continue to be confined as those of tradition and culture as intended by the apartheid Bantu Education policy. It is my well-considered view that a nation that condemns and downgrades 79% of its population as secondary linguistic citizens in their ancestral land is guilty of perpetuating indignity, inequalities, racial inferiority complex and entrapment of its citizens in the vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty. One’s mother tongue is not just a communication tool but, the engine one’s logic and intelligence. It is also an economic and political tool as the one who controls the language controls the mindset of a nation. It is a calamity of despicable proportions that a black African-led government claiming to be the liberator has dismally failed to position and develop black African languages as those of prestige and prosperity," she said.

Khoza's ADeC resignation and subsequent retirement from politics, comes after a longheld dispute with some party members, including Lufuno Gogoro and Mpho Ramakatsa, whom she accused of joining ADeC because they wanted to hold positions.

In March, it was reported that some party were demanding her resignation if she refused to recognise the newly elected interim leadership and reverse the expulsion of Gogoro and Ramakatsa.

Khoza resigned as an ANC MP in September last year after months of controversy with the ruling party. She was one of the most vocal ANC MPs who called for President Jacob Zuma to resign.

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal later formally charged her for her pronouncements. She was charged with ill-discipline, provoking division and bringing the party into disrepute.

She resigned from the ANC during her disciplinary hearing.

"I also wish ADeC well in its future endeavor. I thank all the genuine changers especially Moses Mayekiso, a seasoned civil rights activist and trade unionist for his guidance and humble spirit. I really believe that his presence in the leadership of ADeC amongst highly articulate, energetic and talented youth leaders such as Feziwe Ndwalane, Nathaniel Bricknell, Anele Kunene, Phindile Ndlovu, Reevin Frank and many others highlights the critical importance of wisdom which only comes with experience. I also hope that ADeC would continue with its Politics Unusual concept, its commitment to the total emancipation of women, loyalty to the South African citizens and ensuring that at all times it is grounded in moral and ethical leadership.

"As the leading founder of ADeC and its director of its Non-Profit Organization (NPO), I therefore resign from both structures and authorize the ADeC National Board under the chairmanship of Moses Mayekiso to liase with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the other directors of the non-profit organisations to fill the vacant position as a result of my resignation and stepping down from politics," she said.</s>Africa is often imagined to be a place in which presidents can do whatever they want, unencumbered by constitutional or democratic constraints. A large body of literature has developed around the idea that the law can be flouted at will, leading to a situation in which what really matters is the personality of the president, not the rules of the game.

The implications of this way of understanding the continent are profound not just for how we think about Africa, but also for how we study it. If democratic institutions don’t constrain leaders, there is no point in researching them. Instead we should spend all of our time looking at informal processes such as ethnicity and patrimonialism.

It’s often said Africa features elections without change. But repeatedly holding elections creates opportunities for the opposition to compete. But, although this image is often repeated within policy circles and the media, it is wrong. A new book I edited, Democracy and Institutions in Africa, argues that approaching the continent in this way creates a deeply misleading picture of politics that underestimates the potential for democratization. In other words, if we want to understand democracy in Africa, we need to take the official rules of the game more seriously.

The book covers a wide range of institutions, including political parties, legislatures, constitutions and judiciaries. As a taster, here are three important ways in which democratic rules constrain African leaders more than you might think.

It’s often said that Africa features elections without change. But repeatedly holding elections not only creates opportunities for the opposition to compete for power. It also promotes democratic consolidation.

Looking at all elections held in Africa since the early 1990s, Carolien van Ham and Staffan Lindberg find that as long as a minimum threshold of quality is met, holding elections increases the quality of civil liberties. This in turn creates greater opportunities for opposition parties to mobilize.

That’s because elections have a number of democratizing effects. These include training voters in democratic arts, encouraging coordination between opposition parties and increasing the pressure on ruling parties to reform the political process. This last happens for example by allowing for a more independent electoral commission.

Repeatedly holding elections fosters new democratic openings that tend to make it more difficult for leaders to hold on to power in the long-run.

The common depiction of African legislatures is that they are weak and feeble. They’re portrayed as “rubber stamp” institutions that can do little to hold governments to account. But this is not an accurate depiction of what happens in a number of countries where conflict between parliaments and presidents is becoming a more common.

As Michaela Collord highlights, in recent years the Ugandan legislature has threatened a government shutdown over an unsatisfactory health budget. Tanzania’s parliament has also forced seven Cabinet reshuffles. South African MPs from the radical Economic Freedom Fighters party captivated TV audiences nationwide by repeatedly calling President Jacob Zuma a thief because he was accused of corruption.

Significantly, parliaments are also beginning to play a role in some of the most important decisions. In both Nigeria and Zambia, it was the legislature that ultimately rejected efforts by sitting presidents to extend their time in office beyond constitutionally mandated limits.

On the theme of term limits, pretty much the only time you will read about this particular institution in the media is when an African leader has changed the constitution to remove them. In the last 20 years this has happened in a number of countries including Burundi, Chad, Uganda and Rwanda.

By contrast, when a president respects term limits and stands down, it goes largely unnoticed. This has created the misleading impression that African leaders can break the rules at will. The reality is that in most cases they can’t.

Reviewing every country in Africa from 1990 to the present, Daniel Young and Daniel Posner find that term limits are twice as likely to be respected as broken. This is especially true for states that lack natural resources.

Significantly, they also demonstrate that when one president respects term limits it creates a powerful precedent that subsequent rulers feel bound to follow. To date, there is not a single country in which a president has tried to outstay their welcome after their predecessor willingly stood down.

These examples are part of a broader trend. In 2015, a sitting civilian Nigerian president lost power to another civilian ruler for the first time. In 2016, the same thing happened in Ghana. In 2017, it was Gambia’s turn. Since then, Liberia and Sierra Leone have also seen opposition victories.

Africa is not without institutions, and we will deeply misunderstand its politics unless we pay careful attention to the rules of the game. From a few isolated examples in the early 1990s, almost half of the continent has now witnessed a transfer of power. Moreover, it is not only when it comes to elections that things are changing. In 2017 Kenyan became the first country in Africa – and only the third in the world – in which the election of a sitting president was nullified by the judiciary.

In South Africa, president Jacob Zuma never lost a national election and the African National Congress continues to dominate parliament. But he was nonetheless forced to resign and leave power early by a combination of public hostility and the emergence of Cyril Ramaphosa as the party’s new leader.

Of course, this does not mean that all presidents have to follow the rules, or that all of these institutions are starting to perform well. The continent features a remarkable variety of political systems and some of its states are on very different political trajectories. In more authoritarian contexts such as Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, the quality of elections remains extremely poor; even when leaders suffer a setback they may be able to bounce back.

But while the process of institutionalization may be patchy and uneven, one thing is clear: Africa is not without institutions, and we will deeply misunderstand its politics unless we pay careful attention to the rules of the game.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Makhosi Khoza, leader of South Africa's African Democratic Change party, resigns just five months after the party formed.