MKMVA lashes out at ‘paralysed’ ANC NEC for divisions

The Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) has gone for broke, attacking the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) and taking a dig at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s indecisive leadership.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the MKMVA appeared to lash out at factionalism and disunity within the ANC NEC.

At the same time, this controversial body took exception to “selective morality” in the ANC’s top leadership towards corruption.

“This is tantamount to the treasonous betrayal of our revolution. The ANC is in the [throes] of a deep – and potentially fatal – existential crisis. It is indeed a watershed moment, and the situation can certainly not be allowed to continue along this disastrous downhill trajectory,” MKMVA national chairperson Kebby Maphatsoe said.

Maphatsoe, who served on the ANC NEC under former president Jacob Zuma, lashed out at the ANC’s leadership, saying the in-fighting in the party’s top decision-making structure had worsened since the 2017 conference in Nasrec.

He said party leaders were defending factional turfs with hardly any decisions being taken.

“In fact, as time progresses it is becoming worse. This insidious, pathetic, in-fighting and defending of factional turfs literally paralyse the national executive committee, and thus the whole ANC,” Maphatsoe said.

While he was cautious not to directly attack Ramaphosa, Maphatsoe insisted there was no decisive leadership in the party.

“More often than not it seems that our once proud liberation movement has become a rudderless ship tossed around amidst the storms of economic depression, the Covid-19 pandemic, and corruption.”

Without a sense of irony, the MKMVA – whose leaders have been linked to state capture and have defended the Guptas in the past – has taken a stance against corruption amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Des van Rooyen, the state capture-implicated former minister, spoke out against what he called “selective morality” in the party regarding corruption, where not all corruption was regarded as equal.

“Sadly factionalism makes the NEC not to pursue theft and corruption everywhere, and in all its manifestations,” Maphatsoe read from a statement.

When probed about accusations about ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule’s sons’ scoring massive personal protective equipment tenders from the state, Maphatsoe moved to defend him, saying there was nothing wrong with the son of a politician doing business with the state.

But in the same breath, he made a thinly-veiled reference to accusations that Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Khusela Diko’s husband, Madzikane Diko, scored a R125-million tender to provide PPE to the Gauteng Department of Health, labelling that corruption.

Maphatsoe said it was corruption for a six-month-old company with no track record to be awarded a tender to provide PPE.

“This terrible tendency to go for mainly small black entrepreneurs and expose their corruption in order to divert attention away from the big cases of corruption must be fought tooth and nail.

“We are not saying that if smaller entrepreneurs are involved in corruption that they should not be apprehended, but it cannot be allowed that action against them is used to cover up truly big corruption of hundreds of millions and billions of rands.”

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