Manana ‘has taken full responsibility, has shown remorse’ – ANC

According to an ANC press statement on Wednesday morning, former ANC MP Mduduzi Manana’s resignation from the National Assembly was a sign that he was remorseful.

However, this seemed to contradict Manana’s own statement on why he quit on Tuesday, in which he appeared to say he was responding to mounting pressure against him and had instead to decided to devote his time to other pursuits.

Manana said he would be voluntarily resigning as a member of parliament for the ANC despite the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) declining to prosecute him for alleged assault against his domestic worker.

He said he had waited for his name to be “cleared”, as quitting earlier would have been an “admission of guilt”, despite mounting pressure from even those within his own party.

Manana said the NPA’s decision left him feeling “totally exonerated”.

It was reported that his domestic worker Christine Wiro withdrew a case of assault against him after he allegedly pushed her down the stairs at his home. He was also caught on a recording offering her R100,000 as a “consolation” after she went to the police.

Wiro later explained that she didn’t want to pursue the case since Manana was a powerful man.

Manana said on Tueaday he had decided to resign after about a decade in the National Assembly so that he could focus on campaigning for the ANC, and on his business and academic interests.

He said that in the spirit of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Thuma Mina campaign he would be donating a portion of his pension to charity, with R1 million going to a men’s group fighting abuse, and another R500,000 to a group distributing sanitary pads.

He also committed to funding the Unisa studies of five students, to increase “their capacity” to understand local gender relations.

Manana concluded by committing himself to combating sexual and gender-based violence “wherever it manifests itself”.

On Wednesday, ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu confirmed they’d received his resignation and said they thought it was indicative of someone who “has taken full responsibility and has shown remorse for his actions relating to his involvement in a gender-based violence case where a court of law found him guilty”.

He was referring to the case last year in which Manana was found guilty of assaulting two women at a nightclub in Johannesburg, which Manana himself had not mentioned directly in his statement.

He said they wished “comrade Manana well with all his future endeavours”.