Phalatse still waiting for legal correspondence four days after calling ANC ‘corrupt’

Former Joburg mayor Dr Mpho Phalatse is still waiting for the ANC to litigate against her and the Democratic Alliance.

Six days ago, ANC spokesperson in Johannesburg Chris Vondo gave Phalatse two days to apologise for calling the party corrupt.

Four days after the deadline set by Vondo, Phalatse said she has yet to see any legal correspondence cross her desk.

Vondo did not answer his phone, nor did he reply to WhatsApp messages sent by The Citizen to establish whether he intended to make good on his threat of litigation at some point, considering the deadline he set had passed.

Vondo called Phalatse’s statements a rant and said to the media last week: “It must be put on record that we are calling on her to retract and apologise for calling the ANC corrupt.

“We want her to retract that statement and publicly apologise to the ANC within 48 hours.”

However, Vondo might have missed ANC leader President Cyril Ramaphosa’s lambasting of the party in August 2020 when he suggested the ANC should bow its head in shame and humble itself before South Africans.

In an internal ANC newsletter, Ramaphosa also wrote: “We must acknowledge that our movement, the ANC, has been and remains deeply implicated in South Africa’s corruption problem.”

He called the ANC “accused number one” in corruption. A year later, in June last year, Ramaphosa said that SA had lost R1.5 trillion from the fiscus in corruption-related activities in five years.

Then the Zweli Mkhize and Digital Vibes scandal rocked the ANC’s reputation further and in February the R62 million scandal involving the president’s game farm, Phala Phala, closed the loop.

In between, personal protective equipment scandals and the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture’s reports were a further indictment of the organisation Vondo was defending.

The Citizen did not have the opportunity to ask Vondo which aspect of the former mayor’s statement was offensive.

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