Struggle stalwart Mavuso Msimang, who has quit the ANC over what he called its governance failures and “endemic” corruption, has called on ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula to retract claims that he had accepted a bribe to join former FirstRand group chair Roger Jardine’s political start-up Change Starts Now.
Msimang said the accusations were insulting and libellous, and demanded that Mbalula retract them “soon”. He said it was a pity and an “embarrassment” the governing party had someone of Mbalula’s calibre as its secretary-general.
Msimang quit the ANC, a party he had served for six decades, on Wednesday last week. He said he had been shown a video clip of Mbalula addressing an ANC rally on Sunday. “In this clip he accuses me of having accepted a bribe in order to join the party of Mr Roger Jardine,” said Msimang, the erstwhile deputy president of the ANC Veterans League.
“Well, first of all I have not joined any party, and secondly it’s insulting to suggest that I accepted a bribe. Another deliberate lie of Mbalula’s is that I announced my resignation from ANC through the media. He knows very well that around 3.50pm on December 6 I sent an email to himself and to his PA, exclusively at Luthuli House.”
Msimang said within two hours the resignation letter was doing the rounds on ANC WhatsApp chat groups, with comrades asking him whether it was true or not.
“I was shocked,” said Msimang, adding that he later understood the resignation letter to have circulated even beyond ANC chat rooms.
“It’s only when I was called by media that I responded to confirm the veracity of this ... letter. I had to control the narrative of my resignation. It’s really a pity that the ANC has a person like Mbalula as its secretary-general. It’s an embarrassment.”
Msimang said for an organisation that once boasted the likes of intellectual giants such Sol Plaatje, Oliver Tambo and Duma Nokwe to end up with Mbalula is “actually a commentary on the state of the organisation.”
“How did we elect a person like this to that position?”
He pleaded with Mbalula to retract the allegations. “In fact, I demand that he should retract these accusations against me. They are libellous. He should do so soon. I think it is a friendly request but it has to happen, and happen soon,” Msimang said.
TimesLIVE reported that Mbalula told the crowd they should defend “the people’s movement”.
“2024 is our 2024. We are going to defend freedom and we will defeat our enemies,” Mbalula said, claiming that more than R1bn had been raised as part of efforts to defeat the ANC.
He said ANC opponents were forming lots of political parties to defeat the ANC. “They put in a lot of money to support this project. Roger Jardine is a project and that project will be defeated.”
The ANC, which is dogged by a slew of governance, financial, operational and administrative challenges, is facing the real prospect of losing its electoral majority in the national and provincial elections in 2024, according to several polls, including one by the ANC itself.
Despite having governed SA for almost three decades, ANC politicians including deputy president Paul Mashatile and ministers Thembi Nkadimeng and Lindiwe Zulu have all blamed apartheid for service delivery failures in the country.
In his resignation letter, Msimang said: “For several years now, the ANC has been racked by endemic corruption, with devastating consequences on the governance of the country and the lives of poor people, of whom there continue to be so many.”
Msimang said while the ANC did not invent corruption, the ANC’s own track record of corruption — three decades later — “is a cause of great shame. The corruption we once decried is now part of our movement’s DNA. This has had dire consequences for the most vulnerable members of our society.”
Chief justice Raymond Zondo, who chaired the state capture commission, has said the ANC, parliament and the government failed to take action to halt state capture, while President Cyril Ramaphosa has previously said the ANC is “accused number one” in corruption.
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