Hanekom tells ‘well-known fraudster’ Carl Niehaus to keep quiet

In a public spat on Twitter on Monday night, Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom slapped Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA) spokesperson Carl Niehaus with a blistering put-down after Niehaus was critical of former president Thabo Mbeki.

Divisions between the former (or even current) Jacob Zuma camp in the ruling party and that aligned to Cyril Ramaphosa (and Mbeki) remain as stark as ever. Mbeki himself was scathing in weekend interviews about the disastrous impact the decade of rule under Zuma had been. He pointed out, for one, that the economy had been growing at 5% when he left, and it’s now below 1%.

Niehaus, a staunch Zuma supporter, as well as a defender of beleaguered ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, decided to cast aspersions on the campaigning of Mbeki, who backed the ANC last week for the upcoming elections for the first time since he was recalled by the ANC in 2008.

Niehaus claimed Magashule was working harder than Mbeki to canvass for votes.

“The SG of the ANC, comrade Ace Magashule and the SGO team, have been criss-crossing the country, doing door-to-door mobilising voters for the ANC. Can former President Thabo Mbeki please tell us where he campaigned except for signing that pledge at the Rand Easter Show?”

Hanekom then asked him to “kindly keep quiet”, also referencing Niehaus’ self-confessed fraudulent past.

“Your campaigning, as a well known fraudster, costs us votes instead of gaining us votes. You are arrogant enough to believe you can challenge former President Thabo Mbeki. Please!”

More than a decade ago Niehaus was accused of owing hundreds of thousands of rands to politicians and influential businessmen, and apparently even committed fraud while working for the Gauteng provincial government.

According to a report in the Mail & Guardian, among many other things, he admitted to forging signatures while he was chief executive of the Gauteng Economic Development Agency before resigning in December 2005; he “borrowed money over a six-year period from some of the brightest stars of the ANC and business galaxy, much of which he has not paid back ….; “owed the Rhema Church more than R700,000 when he was asked to resign from his post as chief executive and spokesperson by a full board meeting in 2004”; and he even “admitted to using the Rhema Church’s travel agent to book a holiday for himself and his wife in Zanzibar and to using the presidency’s travel agent to book flights and a trip to Durban for his former wife”.

“When powerful friends could not rescue him from what he described as ‘the devastation of debt’, he drifted into seemingly outright criminal conduct,” according to the report by Pearlie Joubert.

A “tearful” Niehaus was forced to resign from the ANC in 2009, but made a return to the forefront of the party through the MKMVA by backing Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s unsuccessful attempt to become president in 2017.

Hanekom, by contrast, was fired by Zuma in a cabinet reshuffle in 2017, only for Ramaphosa to reinstall him as tourism minister the next year.

(Compiled by Charles Cilliers)

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