Mbalula: ANC ‘step aside’ there to protect party, end faction mobilisation

ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Fikile Mbalula says the party’s “step aside” rules affecting members charged with corruption or serious crimes were implemented to ensure ANC members do not mobilise against the party and cry foul that they are being politically targeted.

Speaking to eNCA in an interview on Thursday night, Mbalula said the ANC had people with vested interests in top positions who carried a lot of influence among the party’s constituencies.

He said the step-aside rule stemming from the ANC’s 2017 Nasrec elective conference was intended to protect the party’s public image and ensure members do not mobilise against the organisation.

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“And then those people control constituencies and they try to mobilise and use their own power to say, ‘I’m being dealt with’. You have seen people being bused to court cases where ANC members have been arrested and accused of serious crimes. It is almost a culture that the ANC must deal with,” Mbalula said.

“Those people who are affected and do not want to see things the way they have been resolved… now that things are happening, they mobilise openly, they coin slogans, they do everything, they coin organisations called RET [radical economic transformation], which is generally un-ANC. The ANC will have to step up its act and the centre must hold.”

In late March, the NEC grappled with the step-aside rule with the body eventually taking a decision that those charged criminally should voluntarily step down or face internal disciplinary action. The rule is expected to affect ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and several other leaders in the party.

Magashule faces 21 charges of fraud and corruption for his alleged role in a multimillion-rand asbestos audit contract in the Free State.

Mbalula said the rules did not mean that when ANC members are asked to step aside, they will be permanently removed from their elected positions.

“It does not mean when it says step aside you are removed from a position, no. You may be a minister charged and then you will be removed from that particular position because it’s a deployment position. But politically you are not removed in an elected position,” he said. “They know that, the position is very clear.”

Mbalula also said members of the ANC could not become a force in the governing party because there is only one organisation. He said ANC policies applied to all members and there were no exceptions.

“The police applies to everyone and doesn’t mean just because I was in the struggle when I was young and therefore I want to blame it on this and that and formulate insurrection and phrase-mongering about RET that is fictitious. It’s the policy of the ANC and we all know that, so we can’t become a force within the ANC because the ANC is one,” he said.

Article by Thapelo Lekabe

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