We have become corrupt to the core, says Mthembu – report

TimesLive reports that the ANC’s parliamentary whip has once again harshly criticised his party while speaking on Friday at the East London City Hall at a funeral for ANC stalwart Malusi Maxegwana.

Addressing mourners, he reportedly told them‚ “We are not sure if we will continue to be free after 2019”, due mainly to corruption and deep divisions in the governing party and fears that the Zuma faction may prevail at the party’s elective conference in December.

He said the party was scoring “spectacular own goals” and was “fractured to the core”.

He reportedly said corruption is now so bad that “we have become corrupt to the core. All we are concerned about is to accumulate wealth as if there is no tomorrow.”

Last year, Mthembu raised the call for the NEC to resign en masse after his party’s dismal performance in August’s municipal elections. How Nkandla was handled has also been a sore point, according to him.

He said the reason he was calling for the entire NEC to be dissolved was because there had been a decision that the ANC was taking “collective responsibility” for its poor performance at the polls on August 3.

If that was the case, then, they should all step down, including Zuma. Instead, no accountability had been enforced, and Mthembu warned that the electorate would punish the ANC later for it showing them “the middle finger”.

He told City Press the apartheid government had at least not gone after its own ministers, as in the witch-hunt of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. He was quoted as saying: “When you see these things being done by a democratic state, your heart jumps. We are not only equal to the apartheid state, we are worse – because they never treated their ministers like this.”

He said he regretted not apologising to former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene for how he and the ANC’s NEC had kept quiet around the extraordinary way he had been axed by Zuma in December.

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