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More and more senior members of the ANC are coming forward to demand that the party’s chairman, Cyril Ramaphosa, step aside.
This as the party’s national executive committee meets this weekend as the shadow of Covid-19-related corruption hangs over its head.
The mayor of Ekurhuleni, Mzwandile Masina, was the last to call for Ramaphosa’s resignation, but did not say what charges Ramaphosa should face.
Masina insisted that all ANC members facing fraud and corruption charges should step aside according to a resolution taken at the ANC’s Nasrec conference in late 2017.
[MUST WATCH] Outside the St. George’s Hotel & Conference where, under normal circumstances, the NEC would meet pic.twitter.com/EiAzkD2bDS
– Mzwandile Masina (@mzwandileMasina) August 29, 2020
He echoed the sentiments of Tony Yengeni, former chairman of the defense portfolio committee, who said Ramaphosa must lead by example and resign. Yengeni himself was found guilty and served time for fraud related to the arms deal.
In a sideways attack on Ramaphosa, Masina said it was wrong for the party chairman to accuse the ANC of being corrupt. She said that the ANC must be consistent in its action against corruption and not act in accordance with party loyalty.
“Any member who has transgressed the ANC resolution must help the party and resign, including Ramaphosa. There is no member of the ANC who is above the ANC, including the president. If you have allegations of corruption and fraud in court, step aside. We need Oliver Tambo’s ANC, ”Masina said.
This week, members of the Magashule-Zuma faction came out one by one to increase pressure on Ramaphosa to hold him accountable for the alleged vote buying at the 2017 Nasrec national conference. They want to take advantage of a provision in one of the ANC resolutions which requires all those facing allegations of fraud and corruption to step aside.
Yengeni said Friday that Ramaphosa should lead by example by resigning, but did not give a concrete reason for saying so.
On Saturday, Andile Lungisa, former vice president of the ANC Youth League and Nelson Mandela Bay councilor, apparently accused Ramaphosa in a tweet, without naming him directly, of committing treason: ‘A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive betrayal from within. The Luthuli and Tambo movement must cleanse itself of the Judas who have sold the total emancipation of our people for silver if it wants to survive. “
A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. ‘ The Luthuli and Tambo movement must cleanse itself of the Judas who have sold the total emancipation of our people for silver if it wants to survive.
– Andile Lungisa (@mrlungisa) August 29, 2020
He echoed the words of former president Jacob Zuma, who explicitly said in an open letter to Ramaphosa on Friday that the president had sold the party with 30 pieces of silver as Judas Iscariot is said to have done.
Zuma further accused Ramaphosa not only of betraying the founding fathers of the ANC, but also of failing to implement the party’s national conference resolutions on land expropriation, nationalization of the Reserve Bank of South Africa, radical economic transformation and free education.
Ramaphosa’s strength to fight the attack against him is doubted. Unlike the Zuma camp that had been vocal and released written statements, its supporters are conspicuously absent in the public feud that followed.
His sponsors such as Derek Hanekom, Enoch Godongwana, Fikile Mbalula, Naledi Pandor and Pravin Gorhan had not responded to public statements issued by their colleagues on the opposite side.
Political analyst Professor Lesiba Teffo said ANC leaders had to accept that the glue holding the party together was too weak to sustain the organization. He said that Zuma no longer had the moral authority as an elder to stand as a judge in corruption cases against others. He hoped that Ramaphosa would not enter the fray into which his opponents were dragging him who were trying to tarnish his image.
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