ANC defends candidates list | The Witness
The African National Congress (ANC) has dismissed claims that it has failed to act against party members who are in the 2024 general election candidates list despite being implicated in the Zondo Commission report.
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Senior ANC members, who were kept on the ANC candidate list despite being implicated by the Zondo Commission report, include former Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba, Water and Sanitation deputy minister David Mahlobo, Parliament’s chair of Chairs Cedric Frolic and Sports, Arts and Culture minister Zizi Kodwa.
Briefing the media in Johannesburg on Monday, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the ANC has an obligation to follow internal processes before taking action against any of its members.
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The ANC’s integrity commission has been tasked with the responsibility to enforce the party’s step-aside policy stipulating that ANC members facing allegations of corruption should step down from both their party and government positions has recommended that some of the party members should be excluded from the candidate list.
However, Mbalula said processes needed to be followed before such members could be removed.
With members of the ANC who are on the list, their cases have not been confirmed by the NEC (national executive committee) and it is due to process cases which come from the integrity commission that affect individuals.
Should the ANC NEC after evaluating the Commission’s recommendations, resolve to act against the implicated members, Mbalula said, then the implicated members could even be recalled from Parliament.
No one has been let off the hook.
Adopted by the ANC’s 2017 national conference, the ruling party’s step-aside policy, which the integrity commission relied on when it recommended that some ANC members should be removed from the candidate list for the May general election, was meant to showcase the party’s commitment to root out corruption within its ranks after surveys had shown that perceptions of widespread corruption within the ruling party were responsible for the ANC’s decline in electoral support.
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While Mbalula said the ANC’s step-aside policy, which was an important pillar of the ruling party’s renewal programme, was key in ensuring that the ANC remained a party which the citizens can trust, it was not the only intervention to renew the ANC.
“It is one of the steps which the ANC is taking to empower the movement,” he said.
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Former president Kgalema Motlanthe, who is currently the chairperson of the ANC electoral committee, said it would be wrong to interpret the Zondo Commission’s recommendations as findings against the implicated ruling party members.
The Zondo Commission’s report, in certain instances, recommends further investigations of certain individuals in the list. It did not itself make any definitive finding against some of the people.
While it was true that some ANC members on the party candidate list were implicated by the Zondo Commission report, Motlanthe said, they met all the ANC candidate requirements — including on educational qualifications and criminal record clearance.
The ANC, which submitted its elections candidate list to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Friday, was by late Monday afternoon in the process of releasing its list to the public.
