Cyril faces night of long knives at ANC committee meeting

The night of the long knives is looming for President Cyril Ramaphosa as his detractors tighten the noose around his neck with a concerted plot couched with an anticorruption tag they believe he won’t be able to escape from.

Ramaphosa’s detractors were said to be hatching a plan to turn this weekend’s ANC national executive committee (NEC) gathering into a palace coup against him. This as the NEC was expected to hold an unprecedented discussion specifically focusing on corruption besetting the governing party.

An ANC source said the sudden re-emergence of former ANC Youth League deputy president and Nelson Mandela Bay councillor Andile Lungisa to push for a probe into corruption allegations against Ramaphosa was neither a surprise, nor a coincidence.

“This is a calculated plan to deal with Comrade Cyril. Lungisa is on a mission – he has been tasked to lead the charge from the bottom,” the source said.

Lungisa this week wrote to the ANC top six asking for Ramaphosa to be investigated by the party’s integrity committee for allegedly buying votes at the Nasrec conference in 2017. He alleged Ramaphosa was funded, which implied that the president used crooked means to be elected as ANC president.

Political analyst Professor Andrew Duvenhage said there was no doubt Ramaphosa was being targeted and it wouldn’t be a surprise if his opponents called for a motion of no confidence in him over the personal protective equipment corruption and his pre-Nasrec election campaign issues.

But, he added, “Ramaphosa is not clean, they know that and they want to use this against him. But without doubt this is a counterattack to take attention away from themselves”.

With the ANC Youth League now dead, the Jacob Zuma camp identified Lungisa as an ideal replacement to use in its fightback campaign. Lungisa is not the first to raise the vote-buying issue. He echoed statements by ANC stalwart Tokyo Sexwale and Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, both of whom are believed to be against Ramaphosa.

Duvenhage said the Ace Magashule-Zuma faction’s claim that Ramaphosa allegedly bought votes at Nasrec would not stick because both sides were guilty of using the same tactics to gain advantage.

The ANC source said former eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede would be used as a decoy to deal with Ramaphosa. She might be “sacrificed” by the Zuma backers in the NEC with the view to strengthen the case against Ramaphosa.

Political analyst Xolani Dube said Gumede was going nowhere because she had the backing of Magashule’s followers. He said the political squabbling within the ANC allowed the corruption suspects to roam free at all levels. The analyst said no drama should be expected at the NEC because both sides were comprised by corruption. He said the best they would do was to strike a consensus and let corruption continue.

“The meeting is about closing ranks, smoking the peace pipe and letting everyone steal in his small corner. There will be consensus to protect each other. At the end of the day, nobody will be held accountable. These guys need each other because everyone is implicated,” Dube said.

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