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Carl Niehaus outside the Bloemfontein Magistrates Court in support of ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule.
PHOTO: Kayleen Morgan / News24
- MKMVA spokesman Carl Niehaus has denied that the Radical Economic Transformation group exists.
- Niehaus has been organizing press conferences for the group, which he says will have regular meetings and structures in all nine provinces.
- Some ANC leaders have warned that Niehaus was starting a new party at ANC headquarters.
The leading figure in the ANC’s “Radical Economic Transformation” (RET) faction, Carl Niehaus, has denied the group’s existence.
“I am not a spokesperson for the RET group. There is no RET group in the African National Congress,” he told Newzroom Afrika host Xoli Mngambi on Wednesday.
He said:
There are simply ANC members who support the ANC’s official economic policy program, which is radical economic transformation. So let’s not try to create an impression of fractionalism when there is no fractionalism.
Niehaus, who is also a spokesperson for the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA), said this following claims by other ANC leaders that he was forming a splinter party in the office of the ANC secretary general Ace Magashule, where works, under the guise of RET’s national operations committee.
At a cluster press conference on March 11 at the Booysens Hotel in Johannesburg after their “first strategic coordination meeting”, Niehaus revealed in a statement that the “RET Gauteng” cluster, which appears to have been created in early Last year, it had become national, with fortnightly meetings and “support structures in the nine provinces.”
In the statement, he said:
An increasing number of ANC members throughout our country increasingly feel the urgent need to mobilize for the rapid and complete implementation of the RET, which is the official economic policy program of the ANC. As a result, RET support groups have been established throughout South Africa.
“The increasing number of ANC members partnering with these RET support groups, and the consequent intensification of activities, have required greater cooperation to ensure more effective mobilization and action.”
This led to the establishment of the national coordinating committee, he said.
Niehaus’s statement also included an image of a yellow fist clenched at the top, against a green background and shaded black, the colors of the ANC.
READ | Is Carl Niehaus setting up a parallel ANC at Luthuli House?
He also recently published a discussion paper that he said was published in his capacity as an ANC member “participating in the discussion on what is and should be the economic policy program of the African National Congress.”
Niehaus has also denied that he was trying to be “factional”, rather than saying that he was simply participating in ANC political discussions.
READ MORE | ANC leader warns a ‘new party’ is brewing in Ace Magashule’s office
At least two ANC leaders who are members of the party’s national executive committee, Joel Netshitenzhe and ANC Eastern Cape Secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi, warned that Niehaus was busy establishing a new party from the Magashule office, where he works.
The RET group has been supporting Magashule as well as former President Jacob Zuma in their battle not to appear before the state capture investigation.
They also criticize the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of failing to implement the resolutions of the ANC’s 2017 national conference in Nasrec.
