The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) has not consulted ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma about its support for him as candidate for the party’s presidency.
Speaking at a media conference in Johannesburg on Monday, where it reiterated its support for Zuma, the ANCYL said it did not need Zuma’s permission to start lobbying for him.
”We don’t necessarily need his permission. As a cadre of the movement he is of course always deployed by the party, so we do not need his permission per se,” said ANCYL secretary general Sihle Zikalala.
League president Fikile Mbalula said Zuma could only accept or reject the nomination once the party’s formal nomination process had started.
”It is obvious that he cannot carry himself into the formal process of the nomination. Therefore there is no need for a person-to-person engagement. As the ANCYL we are not immune from being influenced or influencing other people.”
Mbalula said he did not know how much power Zuma had within the ANC or how many influential ANC members supported the notion of a Zuma presidency.
”This will only be tested when it is subjected to the broader and democratic processes of the ANC. We can’t make a calculative conclusion that so much or so many people support Zuma. All we know is that our structures are intact and in a position to lobby.
”The ANCYL does not win positions on numbers. We win them on the basis of the influence that we exert on the ANC,” said Mbalula.
Zikalala said the league wanted the president of the ruling party and the country to be one individual.
Their rejection of the two centres of power — where the party president and the country president could be two different people — had nothing to do with Zuma, but was merely the youth league’s policy position, said Zikala.
The ”two centres of power system” is untenable for democracy, he said.
ANCYL would also advance its policy position at the ANC policy conference in June and the subsequent national conference.
The youth league will gather for its policy conference in April where it will discuss, among other contentious policy issues, the two-centres-of -power scenario.
Summons
Meanwhile, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) has served Zuma with a summons after he apparently failed to submit his tax return, the Sunday Independent reported.
According to the Independent, Zuma attorney Michael Hulley collected the summons from the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
The summons questions the completeness of Zuma’s disclosure of his income and his failure to submit a tax return. While refusing to go into detail, Hurley said the tax return had been filed late.
”We have no comment … we consider Mr Zuma’s tax affairs to be private and so there is nothing to say,” he said.
Following Wednesday’s summons, Hulley struck a deal with Sars that the information it requested would be furnished in early April, the newspaper reported.
Sars spokesperson Adrian Lackay refused to comment on the matter, saying that no Sars official may disclose information regarding the tax matters of a taxpayer. — Sapa