Johannesburg - Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has slammed the ANC’s national integrity commission, saying it is toothless, inconsistent and ineffective in protecting discipline in the governing party.
She says the commission, led by ANC veteran George Mashamba, must consistently and decisively deal with members implicated in questionable conduct in the same way its predecessors did against the likes of Tony Yengeni, Julius Malema and former communications minister Dina Pule.
In an interview with the Sunday Independent on Friday, the ANC national executive committee (NEC) member also called on the party to regulate membership application by vetting and taking prospective members through a political school to protect its values and revolutionary morality.
Sisulu was speaking hours after delivering the ANC’s message of support at a ceremony held in Luanda this week in honour of Angola’s founding president Agostinho Neto, whose party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), supported the ANC’s struggle against apartheid.
She drew parallels between the ANC and MPLA, saying members of the
Angolan Liberation Movement were relatively more disciplined and principled than those of the governing party. This was due to political culture, which saw them retaining their revolutionary demeanour even after liberation, political education, which regulated party membership and their unwavering commitment to socialism.
Sisulu said discipline in the ANC was at an all-time low because “we don’t have disciplinary systems that are even and equally distributed, and I don’t know whether it’s because we are still on a learning curve, or whether it’s the status of the integrity commission”.
The commission, whose members include ANC veterans Sophie Williams-De Bruyn and former justice
minister Brigitte Mabandla, has come under fire from some ANC leaders in recent years for allegedly being ineffective and partial.
This came after it acted against Limpopo ANC leaders implicated in the VBS bank scandal but failed to do the same against KwaZulu-Natal deputy ANC chairperson Mike Mabuyakhulu and Nelson Mandela Bay ANC councillor Andile Lungisa, who have been charged with or found guilty of various crimes.
Others, such as former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo, have accused the commission of failing to act against party members and businessmen who donated R1billion towards President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC presidential election campaign in 2017.
Sisulu said the commission should be as decisive as its predecessors were against Yengeni, Malema and Pule.
Yengeni was removed as ANC chief whip for receiving a discounted vehicle from a company which benefited from the arms deal. Malema was expelled for allegedly sowing division, and Pule was sacked as minister for various scandals.
Others who have been found wanting in recent months include Finance Minister Tito Mboweni and his Minerals and Energy counterpart Gwede Mantashe, whose alleged love triangle with a young woman has been splashed in tabloid newspapers.
“I counted four cases in the past. I counted Tony Yengeni, I counted Dina Pule, I counted Malema and probably two or three others.
“You knew when you were a member of the ANC that if I step out of line, somebody will call me in.”
“But now, anything goes. There are people who now go on social media wearing ANC T-shirts distributing money. That is the height of ill-discipline, saying, well, leadership said it’s okay to get money during the elections. I would have wanted those people called in. We are monetising the values of the ANC,” Sisulu said.
She added that she had no specific cases she thought the commission ought to be following up on or pay sufficient attention to, “but the output is much lower than when we had during the first integrity commission.
“When they dealt with cases, it sent out a clear message to everybody that the ANC will not tolerate this kind of behaviour.”
The minister also called on the ANC to close and regulate its membership application system in the same way parties such as the MPLA, the Communist Party of China and Tanzania’s ruling party Chama cha Mapinduzi do.
“For me, I come from the security background, I would have wanted that, because if you want to keep the values of that particular party, and not dilute them, yes, I would say that if people want to join the ANC, first, they must go to a party school, they must understand the values of the ANC that they want to join, and then we would be able to allow them into the fold.
“They can support the ANC, there are many supporters of the ANC out there. If we want to continue running the government, which is what we fought for, to bring about the necessary transformation and respect for human rights, people will still vote for us,” Sisulu added.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe said Sisulu should use party structures to raise whatever concerns she may have about the performance of the integrity commission (IC), discipline and membership recruitment strategies.
“I would not want to enter the space because I would not know the details she’s referring to. But since she serves in the NEC and is part of the structures, she has got a platform to bring these issues forward and point the IC and all of us in the right direction so that these things are dealt with,” he said.