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KwaZulu-Natal ANC provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo has called on the party and its allies to “hit hard” at Jacob Zuma over his formation of the breakaway uMkhonto weSizwe party while remaining within the governing party.
Mtolo and his Eastern Cape counterpart, Lulama Ngcukayitobi, both tore into Zuma over his move at political gatherings on Monday, describing him as a liar whose actions had caused the party’s decline.
The two provinces are among the ANC’s most influential, while KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home province, has thus far been highly supportive of him, at one point defying the national leadership to support him at court during his corruption trial.
Mtolo has called on the ANC and its allies to “hit hard at JZ” in order to force his supporters within the party — and its election machinery — to show themselves through their “pain”, so that they can be exposed.
The fightback began at the weekend during the build-up to the ANC’s 8 January anniversary celebrations in Mpumalanga, and escalated on Monday, when the party’s provincial secretaries and alliance partners began to weigh in on the matter.
Addressing one of the 8 January build-up events, ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula admitted that the ANC had lied to protect Zuma for spending R238 million in taxpayer money on extension to his private home at Nkandla.
Mbalula said the party would take a decision on how to deal with Zuma — who it had defended at great cost — at the appropriate time.
Other top ANC leaders, including national chairperson Gwede Mantashe, also lined up against Zuma at the weekend during the run-up to the party’s 8 January statement in Mpumalanga.
Mantashe characterised Zuma’s actions as being typical of African presidents who lose power and launch rogue rebel movements in response.
Mtolo, addressing a South African Democratic Teachers Union meeting in Durban, accused Zuma and his daughter Duduzile of appropriating the name of MK for “their own personal selfish benefit”.
He said Zuma had “peddled blatant lies” against the ANC at his media briefing and that his claim that members were being expelled without process being followed was “false”.
Zuma had been an ANC leader when people such as Julius Malema, now Economic Freedom Fighters leader, and United Democratic Movement head Bantu Holomisa were expelled from the party.
“For JZ to now cry like a helpless individual on the expulsion of members who commit
serious misconduct is not only falsehood but exposes how far he can go to mislead
society only to serve his personal interests,” Mtolo said.
He said Zuma’s character was such that he would “never take any responsibility for wrongdoing” and that this was why he was trying to blame the current leadership under Cyril Ramaphosa for the drop in support for the ANC.
“We wish to remind JZ that the ANC started to lose support under him as president,” Mtolo said.
“This decline started from 2009, taking the ANC away from the two thirds majority it gained in 2004 elections. This decline has been there since, including the 2016 local government elections, where he was still president of the ANC, where we lost many metros,” Mtolo said.
Zuma has claimed that the party’s structures had been bought off to support Ramaphosa since 2017, but Mtolo said that the issue of financial influence on the outcomes of ANC conferences had first been raised by then president Nelson Mandela when the party took power in 1994.
“Once again, it shows how selective JZ can be to serve his personal convenience,” Mtolo said.
He said Zuma’s claim that the current leadership was the one which “invented the use of money in the ANC” in the 2017 conference was “not backed by evidence”.
“Therefore, as the movement collectively, we are duty bound to dismiss these lies that are peddled to achieve narrow selfish interests,” Mtolo said.
Zuma’s “lies” had led to actual former members of the ANC’s now-disbanded armed wing MK leaving the ANC with him and this needed to be challenged, Mtolo said.
“Why would some ex-MK combatants follow a man who was a president for a full nine years but left them destitute? It is because they believe his lies,” Mtolo said.
“If we are to be crude, why would they follow a man who used R246 million of taxpayers’ money to build his home — an amount that would have built 2 733 houses for ex-MK combatants? Because his lies have not been confronted.”
In the past, “political charlatans” had been allowed to get away with crimes because people believed their falsehoods, which had not been challenged by the party.
Mtolo said they would go on a verbal offensive against Zuma in order to expose his supporters who were still in the party.
“We must hit hard at JZ so that those who are within … can come out to the open to display their pain,” Mtolo said.
“This is important because some of them are in our election structures but still sympathise with a leader of the opposition. JZ is now no different from the leader of the DA,” he said.
“They are in the same WhatsApp group.”
The ANC’s alliance partners have also turned on Zuma, including the South African National Civic Organisation, of which he was recently elected KwaZulu-Natal chairperson.
While the civic body’s KwaZulu-Natal leadership has refused to act against Zuma, its president, Richard Hlophe, said at the ANC’s celebrations at the weekend that they would be doing so.