The political rehabilitation of former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni — who is still under the shadow of fraud and corruption charges — continues apace.
This week the ANC announced that Yengeni was a member of a high-powered delegation deployed by the party’s national working committee to strengthen ANC structures in the Eastern Cape.
It has also emerged that Yengeni is part of the ANC team that has been negotiating with the New National Party in the ”consultative forum” of the two parties.
In recent months Yengeni has been deployed in the Eastern Cape twice. His last visit to the province was as part of the ANC delegation that supervised the party’s provincial conference earlier this month.
The corruption charges against him are linked to the 47% discount he received on a luxury vehicle from an arms company that benefited from South Africa’s controversy-plagued arms procurement deal.
His trial, where he will appear with the suspended head of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, Michael Woerfel, has been set down for January 16 in the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court.
ANC national spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama defended Yengeni’s inclusion in the various party delegations, saying ”we cannot judge him” until the court case has been resolved. Yengeni was ”still a member of the ANC’s national executive committee” and ”must carry out his duties”.
Ngonyama emphasised that since the corruption charges had been brought against him, Yengeni had been removed as ANC chief whip.
Some ANC members believe that Yengeni has managed to ”survive politically” because of his loyalty to President Thabo Mbeki.
The Mail & Guardian reported last week that Yengeni is being backed by the ANC Youth League, Mpumalanga and the Western Cape for re-election to the party’s national executive committee (NEC)at the ANC conference next month [See ANC structures back Yengeni].
However, ANC structures in Limpopo and the Northern Cape have excluded him from their list of nominations to the NEC.