ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has distanced the party from Shaka Sisulu after he was implicated in a scandal involving trying to tarnish the images of opposition parties in the run-up to the 2016 local government elections. "Shaka Sisulu is not an employee of the ANC‚ he doesn’t work for the ANC [so] I don’t think we should be responding to that issue. It’s not an ANC issue. Here‚ a general manager of the ANC is implicated and we are dealing with that matter‚" said Mantashe ahead of the party’s lekgotla.
Sisulu‚ implicated in a case in which a PR practitioner Sihle Bolani is seeking R2.2m for work she did for the ANC’s election war-room last year‚ said he believed the court case against the ANC was intended to extort money from the party.
Bolani mentioned in court papers that Sisulu convened a meeting in a Johannesburg hotel in May last year where the media team was introduced to ANC General Manager Ignatius Jacobs. In her report on the operation attached to her application‚ Bolani said she was paid R49‚500 for the work she did. However‚ Mantashe maintained that this wasn’t an organisational issue, despite an agreement being signed by both Jacobs and Bolani on December 9 indicating that the ANC would pay R1m by the end of December. Bolani has since received R100‚000.
According to court papers filed on Tuesday‚ Jacobs said: "[Bolani] undertook to volunteer her services and be part of the campaign team‚ together with other volunteers‚ to roll out the elections’ marketing strategy of the [ANC] in preparation for the local government elections on August 3 2016. On November 1 2016‚ [Bolani] submitted an invoice in the sum of R2‚304‚000. The [ANC] and I disputed this invoice on the grounds that there was no agreement that [Bolani] would charge a fee for services rendered for the said amount."
Bolani said she’ll continue to fight the ANC‚ despite receiving death threats and losing a court application against the party.
TMG Digital
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