ANC ‘war room’ whistleblower now wants R4m – report

The woman behind the alleged “ANC war room”, Sihle Bolani, has not gone away and is now reportedly demanding even more money from the ruling party.

Sunday World reports that she is now suing the ANC for a whopping R4 million for public relations work performed for the local government elections last year – if the party does not pay her the R1 million she agreed to as a compromise at the end of last year.

In January, she sued the ANC for R2.3 million, but the matter was struck off the court roll by a judge who failed to see it as urgent.

Bolani claimed “some party officials demanded bribes from her” if she wanted to be paid, Sunday World reported in January.

She accused at least three men of asking her for a kickback of “about R800 000” in the aftermath of the ANC’s failed re-election campaign. The party lost two of the three major metros in Gauteng.

She implicated the ANC’s general manager, Ignatius Jacobs, Shaka Sisulu and John Nkadimeng. Jacobs has subsequently sued Bolani for defamation over the kickback allegation. In her second application, she is now reportedly even implicating presenter Robert Marawa’s actress girlfriend, Pearl Thusi, who she accuses of participating in 12 episodes of a campaign called Right to Vote with Pearl Thusi.

She has released a long list of people, some of them also celebrities, who were members of the “war room”.

Bolani revealed in her January papers that she agreed to a settlement amount of R1 million after several meetings with  people she took to be ANC representatives, but then she was not paid.

In their response to the matter at the time, the ANC’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, reportedly informed Bolani that she may have been duped into working with a company not officially authorised to represent the ANC. Court documents reveal that he told her the company she had dealt with, Black Carbon, was not an entity the ANC owned “nor does it have any shares in it”.

The tabloid also spoke to ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa, who said that the man Bolani had been dealing with, Joseph Nkadimeng, “has never [been] appointed … to represent the ANC and we have never appointed any company called Sihle Bolani Communications during the local government elections campaign”.

He said Mantashe’s response had been correct, since the “ANC has no knowledge of any Joseph Nkadimeng”.

Sunday World, however, referred to Nkadimeng as a “colleague” of Gauteng MEC of transport Ignatius Jacobs.

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