ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Malusi Gigaba. Picture: Gallo Images / Esa Alexander
African National Congress (ANC) national executive committee (NEC) member Malusi Gigaba has questioned his party’s renewal agenda.
Gigaba was speaking at the 80th birthday celebration event of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) on Tuesday.
The former cabinet minister expressed his concern that relationships among ANC members have become “transactional and commodified”.
“We now engage on the basis of how much money you give me, not on the strength of your ideas, your organisational experience and your ability to perform the tasks of the movement,” he said on Tuesday.
Gigaba stated that the ANC was being eroded from within due to the use of money to secure patronage, which in turn fuels factionalism within the party.
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“The commodification of the ANC of relations among comrades has allowed capitalist values to creep into the movement, where decisions have become transactional; be it policy or the buying of election into leadership.
“The problem with that is that we have allowed a Trojan horse because the enemies of the ANC have always wanted to defeat the ANC and they understood that they couldn’t do so from the outside.
“So, the best way is to creep into the ANC and once inside begin to destroy the ANC. You divide the ANC, you cause splinter groups, you dissipate the support of the ANC and the overwhelming power of the united black majority,” the ANC NEC member continued.
Gigaba also told his fellow ANC members that the party’s renewal agenda fails to address the internal corruption driven by those with financial influence.
“The problem with organisational renewal, as we often talk about in our policies, is that it doesn’t deal with this problem.
“So it will deal with how comrades behave in government or areas of deployment, but it doesn’t deal with the problem of the corruption of the ANC by those who have money and trying to answer the question, ‘where do they get that money from, and why is this money so limitless?’”
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The former minister briefly addressed the ANC’s poor performance in the 2024 national and provincial elections, where the party’s electoral support dropped to 40%.
“The question that we have to grapple with as this generation is how do you take renewal further such as you present new ideas. The problem when we went into the election this year is that we go into every election and present the same programmes.”
Gigaba was implicated in the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, chaired by former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, for allegedly colluding with former President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family.
In the second part of the final state capture report, Zondo concluded that Gigaba was “a mere tool” for the influential Gupta family, due to his “close relationship” with them.
The report found that during his tenure as public enterprises minister, Gigaba facilitated the Gupta family’s looting of Transnet and other state enterprises.
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Consequently, Zondo recommended that law enforcement agencies investigate Gigaba and others for corruption and racketeering, specifically regarding cash payments allegedly received during visits to the Gupta compound in Saxonwold between 2010 and 2018.
Gigaba, in response, criticised Zondo’s findings.
Last month, it was reported that the ANC had launched a disciplinary process against Gigaba and he would appear before the party’s integrity commission.
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