Masina to meet regional ANC leadership over controversial tweets

A day after the national ANC slammed him for his tweets and after he dared the party to fire him, Ekurhuleni Mayor Mzwandile Masina will meet his regional executive committee (REC) to discuss the issue.

He confirmed this on Tuesday.

The mayor, whose account was briefly suspended, has already been in touch with the ANC in Gauteng.

ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe released a statement on Monday evening, rebuking Masina over tweets he posted in support of EFF leader Julius Malema’s calls to collapse the country’s “white economy”.

The ANC called on its members to be mindful of what they post to social media and reminded them that nationalising the country’s economy was not a party resolution.

Mabe said Masina’s statement might confuse the ANC’s constituency.

During an EFF virtual media briefing, Malema called on South Africans to stay away, as the country shifted down to level 3 of the lockdown, to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The country’s economy is slowly reopening following a hard lockdown that started in March.

Gauteng ANC secretary Jacob Khawe said while he had a brief conversation with Masina, the province was waiting to get a proper account of what unfolded.

“We’re waiting to hear from him. We don’t want to enter this from a social media perspective. All we need to do is look at what he said against the standing ANC resolutions, look at what he also tweeted after the statement and take it from there,” said Khawe.

Without mentioning any names, he said the ANC did not release statements against every member who it thought publicly transgressed its views on issues.

“We need to look at the consistency of national office when it comes to members.”

“If you don’t look at one member and say the decision of the conference was this and there’s no statement, then another leader says that and there is a statement… then you are dragging the ANC into inconsistent behaviour,” Khawe said.

“The ANC can’t call one member to order and leave others out,” he added.

Khawe also said the province was keen to engage with the national office over its apparent selective approach towards ANC members, to avoid a situation in which some within the organisation fell that others are allowed to divert from conference resolutions, but others can’t.

Not the first time

In the run-up to the party’s 2017 national elective conference, Masina threatened to jump ship if Ramaphosa emerged as the ANC’s president.

While he withdrew the remarks and pledged to serve under Ramaphosa, he made known his loyalty towards Jacob Zuma, the former president of the party and South Africa.

Masina recently raised the ire of his supporters when he tweeted his disapproval of the “Zooming with the Zumas”{ show, which was meant to be a tell-all series of conversations between the former leader and his son, Duduzane.

Masina is the third leader to be chastised in public by the party in recent years.

Last year, a scathing statement calling national executive committee member Derek Hanekom a “wedge-driver” was issued by the ANC’s secretary general Ace Magashule, after it emerged that Hanekom had been meeting with the EFF ahead of a parliamentary motion of no confidence against Zuma.

In January a harsh statement was also issued against Finance Minister Tito Mboweni over his dissenting views about the SA Reserve Bank (Sarb).

The former reserve bank governor slammed the ANC’s 2017 resolution to nationalise the Sarb.

Recently, Mboweni was rebuked at an ANC NEC meeting after he expressed his difference of opinion over the ban against the sale of all tobacco products during the lockdown.

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