ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula. Photo: Luba Lesolle/Gallo Images
ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula has admitted that the party candidates lists submitted to the Electoral Commission of South Africa were interfered with, but dismissed allegations that he had anything to do with the manipulation.
He was speaking to journalists at the party’s headquarters on Sunday following the decision by the ANC to postpone former president Jacob Zuma’s disciplinary hearing until after the 29 May general elections.
Mbalula said changes made to the ANC’s rules after its Mangaung conference in 2012 and the one in Nasrec five years later meant that, unlike other secretary generals before him, he had no influence on the process of selecting candidates for the party’s elections lists.
“In the past, the secretary generals used to run the ANC list with [electoral committee head Kgalema] Motlanthe, but the conferences in Mangaung and Nasrec changed that and said we must establish an independent (ANC) electoral commission. So the matter then [was taken out of] the hands of the secretary general,” Mbalula said.
He made the comments two days after the Mail & Guardian quoted sources as saying the secretary general was under fire after a report by Motlanthe found that the party’s provincial and national parliamentary lists had been manipulated under his watch.
“What [the sources] want to portray is that Mablula was pressing the piano on the ANC list. Mine was just to press and make sure the list was submitted on time,” Mbalula told journalists on Sunday.
In his response on Friday to the M&G report, Monthlante said all he knew was that some omissions had been made at the last minute when uploading the lists, and this matter was raised with the electoral committee.
“As the electoral committee, we worked out some corrective measures which we shared with the leadership of the ANC, the officials to be specific. This is a matter that is being attended to as far as I know,” Motlanthe said.
On Sunday Mbalula said there were “glitches” that affected about four provinces and this was being attended to.
“There are very few people who were affected. In Gauteng, it was three, North West it was three and in KZN it was three. Where there was a bigger challenge was Limpopo but equally we are attending to it,” he said. “The national working committee has resolved to establish an investigation into what happened in terms of those provinces.”
Meanwhile, Mbalula said the ANC had decided to postpone Zuma’s disciplinary hearing, after the state raised security concerns about having it before the elections.
The ANC had last week summoned Zuma to appear before its disciplinary committee this Tuesday at its Luthuli House headquarters in Johannesburg — with a possible expulsion on the way — over his endorsement of the new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.
Zuma has been campaigning for the MK party over the past few months and the ANC said this contravened its rules on “joining or supporting a political organisation or party, other than an organisation in alliance with the ANC, in a manner contrary to the aims, objectives and policy of the ANC”.
MK party members vowed last week that they would gather outside Luthuli House in support of Zuma during the disciplinary hearing.
“We have informed the NDC [the ANC’s national disciplinary committee] to put this matter in abeyance because they don’t want something that happened in the past like when the DA came here and then there was violence,” Mbalula said on Sunday, referring to a march to Luthuli House by the Democratic Alliance over the country’s energy crisis, which was blocked by the ANC Youth League.