Mail & Guardian Reporters
DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki comes in for a scathing attack in Bantu Holomisa’s court challenge against his expulsion from the African National Congress.
Holomisa says in his affidavit served on the African National Congress this week that he had cleared his Truth and Reconciliation Commission submission with President Nelson Mandela, who “encouraged me to place the material I had before the TRC”.
The truth submission was the start of his problems in the ANC as it implicated his Cabinet colleague Stella Sigcau in benefiting from Sol Kerzner’s alleged gambling rights bribe in the former Transkei.
Says Holomisa: “When I gave evidence I gave it in the confident belief that it had been approved of by my colleagues in the ANC.”
Mbeki contacted Holomisa after learning from the media that he had “attacked Sigcau”. Holomisa told him “the media was making a mountain out of a molehill”.
Holomisa continues that Mbeki made “no suggestion that I had acted incorrectly”, but that he would mediate between him and Sigcau. Then Mbeki came out claiming the Alexander Commission and courts had cleared Sigcau. Holomisa says that commission had merely confirmed what he [Holomisa] later told the TRC – and that Mbeki’s comments “had the effect of wholly misrepresenting the position”.