Former uMKhonto weSizwe veteran Mavuso Msimang has called on the Jewish community to vote ANC in the hope that President Cyril Ramaphosa will be able to renew the ‘now tainted’ founding values of the organisation.
Addressing the annual Passover Freedom Seder which celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage, Msimang said his hope and the hope of many South Africans was that Ramaphosa was the best man to lead the ANC.
“In Cyril, we believe. He may not be a saint or angel but he is the best thing that has happened to South Africa after many years of leadership turmoil. I am made to trust and believe in him and I would like to call on the Jewish people to vote for the ANC again,” he said.
Msimang was recently rapped on the knuckles by his colleagues in the ANC for authoring a document calling on the integrity committee of the party to order the resignation of all the ‘tainted’ comrades on the party’s candidate list for the upcoming elections.
He was more than an hour late for his address and the organisers of the Freedom Seder had to ask former Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs, who was one of the speakers, to take the podium first in the absence of Msimang.
Msimang apologised profoundly to the organisers, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, and said this was partly due to the fact he was in demand and had to conduct different interviews with five radio stations.
“I had to talk about the document we drew up as veterans decrying the inclusion of some tainted people whom there is irrefutable evidence of their taste for bribes from the Guptas,” he claimed.
Among the attendees was Inkatha Freedom Party leader Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
For his part, Sachs who lost his right arm in a bomb blast while in exile, was full of praise for the country’s Constitution which he said had enough checks and balances but the only shortfall was that when ‘we wrote it, we had in mind people like [former President Nelson] Mandela.
“I had huge relief when [former President Jacob] Zuma finally resigned but also sadness as I had worked with him in exile and never at any given time detected these characteristics in him.
“I was happy that the curtain was now falling over the dark and sad part of our democratic nation,” Sachs told the gathering at the Villa Arcadia in Parktown, which was a Jewish refugee camp.
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