People who persist with calls for the ANC to recall Jacob Zuma as the head of state are insensitive to the fact that doing so could lead to the ANC splitting.
This was the assertion of ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe yesterday as he sought to defend the party’s reluctance to order Zuma to resign in the wake of a litany of controversies.
Mantashe criticised those he suggested were obsessed with removing Zuma and said they should instead be “giving us space to manage problems”.
“You think we must just fire Zuma, and if the ANC splits, it splits. There is unfairness in the way you put these cases to us,” he said during a round-table discussion with journalists at Luthuli House.
Mantashe had to field tough questions, including the fact that the ANC’s internal disciplinary processes have failed and that the party seemed incapable of reining in Zuma.
“We are running an organisation, not a firm of analysts. The analysts say fire Zuma now, and what happens after that is not their business. It’s our business.”
He also lashed out at what he termed lawfare, saying there was a deliberate attempt by the opposition to dislodge the ANC from power by targeting the legislative and executive functions in the judiciary.
“South Africans must be very wary of pushing our country towards that direction.” He, however, stressed that the ANC was “not saying government must not be taken to court”.
His remarks come after Deputy Agriculture Minister Bheki Cele encouraged the masses on Sunday to drag the ruling party to court if it continued failing them.
Cele said he was embarrassed to be a member of the ANC’s powerful national executive committee (NEC) over its failure to lead the 105-year-old former liberation movement.
“If we continue to fail you, don’t stop taking us to court. Do it until we learn to lead. This thing of dismissing people who go to court, you should be saying dismiss them (the NEC) as well. I hope and wish that the next NEC leads, so that the ANC does not have to rely on the courts,” Cele had said.
But Mantashe said: “We are moving towards lawfare, where the judiciary runs everything. There is no democracy when that happens.”
He added that the failed no-confidence vote in Zuma was neither a victory nor a defeat.
“We don’t call it a victory, especially when ANC MPs voted with the opposition.”
Of the 384 MPs, who cast their votes by secret ballot, 177 voted in favour of Zuma’s removal, 198 rejected the motion, and there were nine abstentions. This meant that about 35 MPs defied the ANC.
On Monday, ANC MP Dr Makhosi Khoza admitted that she voted with the opposition for Zuma’s removal during the secret ballot. She made the admission a day after Zuma had called for the purging of ANC MPs who voted with the opposition.
Yesterday, Mantashe stated matter-of-factly that there won’t be a witch-hunt against the defiant ANC MPs. He was quick to warn, though, that the ANC would “deal” with those who publicly admit to voting against the party.
“When you do that, you go out of your way to undermine the organisation.
“That one we are going to deal with,” he said, adding that the motion was not just about Zuma, but an attempt to remove the ANC from power.
Axed tourism minister Derek Hanekom, who chairs the ANC’s disciplinary committee, is among ANC MPs who had said they would vote with their consciences. He had taken to social media to challenge some of the ANC’s decisions.
Mantashe lamented: “His tweets compromise him as chairperson of the committee. He tweets every morning on every issue.”
@luyolomkentane
@LebogangSeale