Africa-Press – South-Africa. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has lambasted his predecessor Ace Magashule as a “sideshow” hellbent on dragging the ruling party down as he plots to start a new party.
Mbalula was responding to questions about ANC supporters who set their party T-shirts alight in protest of Magashule’s ousting from the party earlier this week.
Speaking to journalists in Durban on Saturday, Mbalula said the ANC would focus on building the party.
“The ANC, in its history, has dealt with people who are very powerful, and some of them have proven not to be powerful once they’re outside the ANC. Party discipline cannot be subverted simply because somebody is powerful. Processes of the organisation have been followed,” Mbalula said.
“It’s not an easy decision to arrive at expulsion. When we lose a member through expulsion, we get saddened by that.”
However, he said, Magashule had “defined himself deliberately outside the party for nefarious reasons”, including starting his own political party.
“Follow the party, not individuals. If you destabilise the ANC because you’ve got individuals [you prefer] in the party, you don’t serve the party.”
He said Magashule “enabled” his expulsion “to trigger anarchy” in the party. Mbalula said Magashule opted not to defend himself through ANC structures.
Mbalula also touched on the Russia-Ukraine war and said the ANC remained resolute in its non-aligned stance. He commended President Cyril Ramaphosa and other African leaders’ peace mission to Ukraine and Russia.
He said the West was trying to “coerce” the South African government in what he called the US “proxy war with Russia”.
“We need to speak to both sides. It’s very important. People are saying South Africa has not taken a stand. We’ve taken a stand against the stand. We have taken a stand against the war,” Mbalula said.
He said the ANC wasn’t pro-Russia and was only interested in pursuing peace. “It won’t help us when we take sides, arming one group against the other. Nobody will win there. It is important that Russia and Ukraine come to the party,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula pledged support for journalists and others who were stranded in an airport in Warsaw in what has been described by some as a geopolitical tactic to frustrate the South African government’s efforts towards peace.
“It is disturbing what we’ve seen in the news about South Africans who were not allowed to disembark for 24 hours in an aeroplane, which is unheard of. What did these people do that Poland would act in such a manner?” Mbalula said.
“It is disturbing, and we are in solidarity [with journalists]. We’ve got reports left and right, and we hope to get a proper account from our deployees.”
Mbalula said journalists were merely there in the spirit of covering the peace mission. He said Poland needed to have “fundamental reasons” for the scenes that unfolded in Warsaw.
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