The African National Congress said on Tuesday it did not discuss the removal of President Jacob Zuma after he replaced finance minister Nhlanhla Nene with a lowly backbencher, which caused South African markets to go into a tailspin and the rand to spiral down.

ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte told a news conference on Tuesday that Zuma decided to change the appointment – replacing backbencher David van Rooyen with Pravin Gordhan after only four days – on Sunday afternoon after a 70-minute meeting with top party officials, including deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, according to news reports.

Duarte said that Zuma’s decision showed he was “willing to listen”.

“The president’s willingness to change an earlier deployment in the face of our sluggish economic climate and representations from role players demonstrated bold leadership, bringing certainty and assurance in the finance portfolio,” Duarte was quoted as saying.

The statement by the ANC comes despite widespread outrage in the public and in the business sector at the estimated R171 billion lost by Zuma’s decision, as well as mounting campaigns to see Zuma removed, a Twitter storm under #ZumaMustFall, and marches planned for 16 December.

Even though the financial chaos has been directly attributed to Zuma’s move – after years of mismanagement by government departments, as well as scandals like Nkandla and the nuclear deal with Russia in the face of public criticism – ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa said on Tuesday the ANC never discussed removing Zuma and that Nene had never been offered his job back again.

Many newspapers and radio commentators (some with hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook) have condemned Zuma’s move to fire Nene and asked for his removal. Online petitions are multiplying – one in particular, on change.org, has reached almost 170,000 signatures. More than a dozen leaders from various fields, from academic Barney Pityana to labour leader Zwelinzima Vavi, have written an open letter to Zuma expressing their concern over his handling of everything from South African Airways to the nuclear programme (read the letter here).

Protest marches in various places across the country are planned for 16 December. (Please check times and locations.)

The marches are in Johannesburg (starting on the Braamfontein side of the Nelson Mandela Bridge) organised by Unite Against Corruption, which has confirmed the march. A spokesman for the rights organisation Section 27′ was quoted as saying, “The protest will take place on the Nelson Mandela Bridge tomorrow morning from 10am to 12pm. It’s a protest organised by churches, Section 27 and Corruption Watch. Its aim is to provide people with an opportunity to express their anger with the president.”

In Cape Town, the march is meant to begin near the Natural History Museum in the Company Gardens at 10am, and has been confirmed by Unite Against Corruption. Another, earlier protest outside Parliament at 8am still needs permission, but its participants might join the 10am march, which will be addressed by Reverend Mpho Tutu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter. A march in celebration of Tutu will begin at 11am, and Unite said people are welcome to join in that march too if they want.

A march in Pretoria is meant to begin at 9am at the Pretoria Art Museum and head to the Union Buildings.

In Port Elizabeth, local resident Alter James is organising a march scheduled to start at 10am at the corner of Holland Street and Govan Mbeki Avenue.

In George, there will be a silent picket at Unity Park at the top of York Street from 10am to 1pm.

In Plettenberg Bay, a silent protest will be held from 4pm to 5.30pm on Main Street.

Other places have been mentioned having protests too – Vanderbijlpark and Stilbaai, among others – but the best is to keep checking on Google or Facebook.

A march in Durban is scheduled for February.

Numerous commentators have added their voices to the heated debate, ranging from the sublime to – in the case of the ANC Youth League – the ridiculous.

Zuma’s antics in this last week have given a deeply disconcerting glimpse of how poorly governed we are.

The esteemed analyst R.W. Johnson said in an article first published in Rapport that the scenario for his book How Long Will South Africa Survive?, published earlier this year, was coming chillingly true.

“To put it mildly, the markets have been deeply shocked to see that a G20 country like South Africa could be governed in such a Ruritanian fashion and many investors were made to feel that they had dramatically under-assessed the country’s political risks.”

Zuma went from one blunder to another, addressing a group of business people in a rambling 50-minute speech – caught on video – after he had replaced Nene and the markets had sunk.

Said Johnson: “It is not just that we now stand just one notch above junk status. The main point is that Zuma’s antics in this last week have given a deeply disconcerting glimpse of how poorly governed we are. After sacking Nene Zuma blundered through an address to a business audience full of paranoid imaginings and fundamentalist assertions.”

Describing Zuma as a “a semi-educated street corner activist,” Johnson said, “Zuma’s hasty denial that he had had another love-child with (SAA’s) Dudu Myeni merely drew attention to the fact that he had put the country’s economy at risk in order to placate one of his girl friends – probably not even realising that he was doing so”.

In a rather bizarre turn of events, the ANC Youth League on Monday came out with a scathing statement against Public Protector Thuli Madonsela – someone who had until then been uninvolved in the Nene sacking – calling her a clumsy clown, a political celebrity and a CIA agent, among other things.

“We politely request this agent to leave political matters to activists and politicians. We further request her not to attack our government using the highly-respected office that she was correctly appointed to by President Zuma,” the ANCYL said.

Madonsela replied in a tweet that she was “flabbergasted” by the statement and did not know what it was about.

Many believe the ANCYL totally misunderstood the campaign on change.org that is headed “Petitioning Thuli Madonsela: Zuma needs to step down. Government in SA needs to change before its too late.”

Many tweeted the campaign without the word “Petitioning”, which made it look like these were Madonsela’s words. The ANCYL obviously did not read the fine print.