Shivambu lashes out at Gordhan in paranoid blog post

A blog post published yesterday by EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu lends insight into the party’s campaign against Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan.

The post accuses Gordhan of running a “cabal” and “operating a parallel state apparatus”.

According to Shivambu, Gordhan “employs political blackmail to slander political opponents”, something the EFF second-in-command claims has gone on since his role in the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 1980s.

Shivambu also accuses Gordhan of running a Sars “rogue unit” during his time there, citing information in Sunday Times reports on the unit that have been discredited.

The reports were found to be “inaccurate, misleading, and unfair” by the press ombudsman and the newspaper was forced to apologise and withdraw them.

Shivambu does mention the withdrawal of the reports, but claims the publication “withdrew the articles and apologised because Pravin is in power”.

In the post, Shivambu was also dismissive of the recent allegations in a report commissioned by Treasury that his brother Brian “gratuitously” received R16 million from VBS Bank, and of later allegations in The Daily Maverick that Floyd had in turn received R10 million from Brian and that the EFF had received R1.3 million.

READ MORE: Malema blames Gordhan, Treasury for VBS ‘witch-hunt’

According to the post, the press conference held at EFF headquarters this past Tuesday “dispelled the allegations”.

EFF leader Julius Malema stood by Shivambu and said he had seen his bank balances, but did not offer to show these to the public.

At the press conference, Malema appeared to accuse Gordhan and Treasury of implicating the EFF in the VBS Bank scandal as revenge for the party’s supposed role in the removal of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene.

“We know that Pravin Gordhan and his faction are angry about this and they’ve launched a media attack on the EFF to try and shut us up,” he alleged.

Shivambu’s blog post, which the EFF deputy president himself describes in its conclusion as an “insightful polemic”, also quotes Soviet communist leader Vladimir Lenin at length.

It makes a wide range of other claims, including that “capitalists reinstated Pravin as finance minister”, that Gordhan took control of Treasury and “intimidated opponents into submission” and that he blackmailed former Sars commissioner Oupa Magashule. These are only some of the many allegations in the post.

At one point it refers to the “fragrant dominance” of Gordhan. Shivambu presumably meant to write the “flagrant dominance,” as the word “fragrant” implies not that he acted with impunity but that he smells good.

The blog post can be read in its entirety here.

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