South Africa’s Parliament Declines to Impeach Zuma

JOHANNESBURG—South African President Jacob Zuma survived a historic parliamentary vote to impeach him on Tuesday, as his political party continues to protect him from widening calls for his resignation.

Mr. Zuma is facing a barrage of corruption allegations, and an unprecedented high-court ruling last week that he flouted South Africa’s constitution has raised long-standing discontent with his leadership to a new pitch.

Yet Mr. Zuma’s party, the African National Congress, has repeatedly defended him. The party’s wide majority in parliament insured that the impeachment motion was defeated after a tumultuous debate in Cape Town by a vote of 233 to 143.

Julius Malema, a onetime Zuma protégé who now leads the populist Economic Freedom Fighters party, vowed to mobilize street protests against the president. Before the vote, he asked top ANC leaders by name why they were choosing Mr. Zuma over a constitution they helped to create as white-minority rule crumbled in the 1990s.

Mmusi Maimane, leader of the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said South Africans would judge the ANC harshly for standing by its unpopular leader.

“Today it will be recorded that ANC members of this parliament chose to defend a crooked and broken president instead of defend the constitution,” Mr. Maimane said, to a cacophony of cheers and jeers. “Today will signal once and for all that the ANC has lost its way and there’s absolutely no way back.”

Mr. Zuma, who wasn’t present for the vote, has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

The 73-year-old president has overcome many previous allegations of corruption and misconduct, including a 2006 trial for rape in which he was found not guilty. Now, some party members say the president’s allies are worried about losing access to government jobs and contracts should Mr. Zuma be removed from office.

Since Mr. Zuma led the ANC to an election victory in 2014 that secured him a second five-year term as South Africa’s president, the allegations have mounted and public outrage has intensified.

Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said last month that a business family close to Mr. Zuma offered him the job of treasury minister late last year. He turned them down.

Then Mr. Zuma tried to replace trusted Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene with an inexperienced political ally, before reversing course three days later after the country’s rand currency plummeted to record lows.

Last week, the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of Mr. Malema and another opposition party that had sued Mr. Zuma to make him comply with a 2014 order to repay some of the millions of dollars spent on upgrades to his private home.

Mr. Zuma said on Friday that he would repay a portion of the roughly $20 million in misspent funds, to be calculated by the treasury in the coming days.

Opposition leaders and many other South Africans have seized on the swimming pool, chicken coop and other amenities added to Mr. Zuma’s homestead at public expense as evidence that the president is out of step with the concerns of his young and largely jobless constituents.

Since Mr. Zuma took office in 2009, the jobless rate has hovered at around a quarter of the available workforce, and growth has plummeted from some 3% annually to barely positive territory.

A November poll by survey firm Afrobarometer showed that mistrust in Mr. Zuma's leadership had doubled in five years to 66%.