Former ANC chairperson and past speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete said former president Jacob Zuma “has gone crazy”. (Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
Former ANC chairperson and past speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete said former president Jacob Zuma “has gone crazy”, taking issue with his forming a new party that will contest the 29 May elections.
On the sidelines of the ANC’s door-to-door campaign in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg on Wednesday afternoon, Mbete also denied having protected Zuma during her time as speaker.
“We are very, very clear that he [Zuma] has gone crazy, [he] has gone rogue and we are clear in saying people must not vote for uMkhonto weSizwe [MK] party. There is an MK that continues to exist, who are our [military] veterans that we are proud of and we are out here saying whatever anybody else is saying that is now abusing the name of MK must not be listened to,” she said.
In 2017, after a protracted court battle over payments for security upgrades to his private Nkandla home in KwaZulu-Natal, the constitutional court found that the National Assembly had failed to put in place mechanisms to hold Zuma accountable.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, Congress of the People and United Democratic Movement then asked the highest court in the land to compel parliament to hold the then president to account.
Judge Chris Jafta, reading the orders, said the National Assembly must now urgently make those rules.
“The National Assembly must fulfil obligations without delay,” Jafta said, further ordering Zuma and parliament to pay costs associated with this case.
This landmark judgment had a ripple effect on the ANC’s election outcomes in the years following.
Mbete was seen by politicians and pundits as having protected the former president while she was speaker. She was part of a powerful cohort in the ANC that assured Zuma’s ascendancy to power and was elected as national chair of the ANC during his term as president.
But on Wednesday Mbete denied having protected Zuma, arguing that the media had driven this narrative.
“I did not protect him. My submission to Zondo [state capture commission], I put clearly the evidence that the media has been wrongly portraying an image of the speaker protecting the president,” she said.
“What I did was to implement every decision I made on the basis of the rules before me that were guiding every action that I took. Even if it was FW de Klerk I would have taken the same decision.”
Mbete proceeded to say that she was no friend of Zuma, adding that she had worked with him as a political leader of the ANC. She said she had no regrets about her time as the national assembly speaker and had no reason to talk to Zuma now.
The ANC’s prospects of retaining its majority on 29 May are on a knife’s edge, with polling predictions suggesting that the party’s share of the vote will dip below 50%.
With the advent of the Zuma-led MK party, the ANC has roped in its prominent veterans to aid its campaign efforts.
“Indeed, nobody can deny that there are mistakes that have been made by individuals. There are some wrong things that have been done. We publicly know about the investigations,” Mbete said.
“We have acknowledged those mistakes. We have acknowledged those wrongs but we are saying, overwhelmingly, that a lot more good, a lot more progress has been made than what we talk about.”