Tokyo Sexwale: ‘Don’t use Mandela’s name to hide evil ways’

ANC veteran and former human settlements minister Tokyo Sexwale has reportedly warned the country’s politicians from hiding their evil deeds behind the words of late leaders of the governing party, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.

The Sowetan reported on Tuesday that Sexwale said leaders who invoked Mandela and Tambo’s name shouldn’t think that their evil deeds would be forgotten. “Don’t use Mandela and Tambo,” he said.

During his delivery of the ANC’s January 8 statement and the State of Nation Address (Sona), President Jacob Zuma declared that 2017 would be the year of OR Tambo to mark what would be the former ANC leader’s centenary. He has appealed for ANC members to emulate Tambo’s leadership characteristics in his call for unity among party faithfuls.

Sexwale said the ANC was in decline and no one should mess up Africa’s oldest liberation movement, which he referred to as “the people’s organisation”.

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He said the current challenges faced by the party would present it on the one hand as representative of the liberation struggle, and on the other, representative of the “unknown”.

“Leave it the way you found it,” he said in an indirect reference to the ANC’s current leadership under Zuma.

“People are stealing from the lowest to the highest office,” he said committing on rampant corruption in the country.

Sexwale was fired by Zuma from his Cabinet in July 2013.