The Zuma administration has suspended more bureaucrats for corruption in its first 100 days than former president Thabo Mbeki’s did in 10 years, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday.
”Within three months of President Zuma being in office, more heads of department have been investigated and suspended for corruption than in 10 years,” Mantashe told the Cape Town press club.
Mantashe declined to give a list of people who had lost their jobs, saying he did not want to ”name and shame them”.
He said the constant allegations that the ANC was soft on graft because of the controversial release on medical parole of Schabir Shaik, Zuma’s former financial adviser who was convicted of fraud, or wanted to undermine the independence of the judiciary, were riddled with bias.
He compared Shaik’s release with that of apartheid-era assassin Almond Nomfomela.
”If Shaik gets released from jail, it’s because he’s close to Zuma. But if Nomfomela gets released it’s no big deal,” he said.
Similarly, he continued, the judiciary was seen as strong and independent if it found against somebody linked to the ruling party, but was seen as compromised if the outcome of a case favoured the ANC.
Mantashe distanced himself from the Shaik corruption scandal, saying though he took up his post ”voetstoots”, he did so less than two years ago at the party’s Polokwane conference.
The watershed conference, where Zuma wrested control of the ANC from Mbeki, had been the salvation of the party, Mantashe said.
”It marked the beginning of renewal and rectification in the party. It was about rescuing the ANC.”
The ANC went back to its being a movement of the masses, trimmed down its key priorities to a list of five that could galvanise the electorate and changed its deployment practice to appoint people who were competent to key positions.
”That informed the composition of the Cabinet. People have been appointed to their strengths.”
The media and others who had speculated that Zuma would fill senior positions with supposed allies had repeatedly been proven wrong, he said.
”They all said Zuma was going to appoint his friends but that has not happened until now. No appointment has been made that is predictable.”
Mantashe said making Gill Marcus governor of the Reserve Bank and Bheki Cele the new police National Commissioner were examples of how the president wrong-footed his critics.
He also issued a warning to ”factions” in the ANC who leaked a row in the top ranks of the party over the lack of black ministers in top economic portfolios to the media.
Mantashe said criticism from certain quarters that the posts had been handed to ”minorities” misunderstood the ANC’s historic struggle against race, gender and class discrimination.
ANC Youth League president Julius Malema had used Marcus’s appointment as an example of the failure to put black people in top economic jobs, but Mantashe said those who focused on race in this regard were overlooking the victory for gender equity in the bigger picture.
”It is the first female head of the Reserve Bank in the history of the country.”
He flatly denied criticism that the ruling party was trying to ”do away with provinces” by eroding their power over local government through the Constitution 17th Amendment Bill.
”There is no strata of the ANC that has taken that decision.”
If there were ever an attempt to do so, Mantashe added, the biggest resistance would come from within the ANC.
”The premiers have tasted power, you know.” – Sapa