Former Free State Premier, Beatrice Marshoff fired Ace Magashule during her term as premier of that province.
In an interview with Carte Blanche on Sunday Marshoff expressed surprise when Magashule was elected secretary-general of the African National Congress (ANC) in Nazrec in 2018.
Marshoff discusses her views with Bongani Bingwa on #702Breakfast:
“Knowing the experiences that we had in the province with comrade Ace and also knowing that he is a very determined man when he wants something he makes sure that he gets it by all means.
“I was just worried that as the new secretary-general of the ANC that there are going to be times when this side of his character will manifest itself and it will create tension within the organisation itself.”
Marshoff also shares what it was like working with Magashula in the same province.
“He likes to be in control. I think he is just a control freak or he just wants to be in control and just wants to make sure that he has all his ducks in a row. He made sure that everyone was loyal to him and the only way he would sustain this was through patronage.
“Anybody who wanted to stay in his good books had to toe the line.”
She adds that there was always a lot of tension between herself and Magashule which lead to her dismissing him.
“Also the way Ace could not succumb to anyone’s authority and he did a few things that were not going to fly with me. When he was appointed for MEC for Agriculture, there were a few issues there but the major thing was when I got a report that animals were being slaughtered at an agricultural college.
“The meat was slaughtered and packed into packages, loaded into bakkies and taken to Parys and that was unacceptable because those animals belonged to the agricultural college and weren’t there for anyone to just decide that they wanted the meat to slaughter, said Marshoff.
This was reported to the police and Scorpions at the time, she says, but the investigation into the matter didn’t produce any results.
“Every time I asked the police, I was told that the matter was being investigated and at one stage they said they could not continue with the investigation because they did not have enough evidence. I think people were afraid to come forward.”
She notes that despite the many allegations against Magashule, nothing ever points directly to him.
“Ace is never linked to anything. He doesn’t sign any documentation. He would give verbal instructions. He would pick up a phone and tell people what to do, but there is never a paper trail that leads back to Ace, and that has always been the difficulty.
“I resigned in 2009. I was on the national list to Parliament and on the day that I was supposed to have been sworn in as a Member of Parliament, I had taken that decision to resign from the list and came back home.
So there is no reason that I can be bitter or have any untoward feelings towards Ace being the premier.
“I have always just been very unhappy with the way things turned out. And here is an organisation that gets blamed for everything that goes wrong, yet it is individuals within the organisation that are doing these things and continue to do these things and they do not get the blame.”
She concludes by saying that even though she wouldn’t want to comment on the allegations of Magashule tempering with the ANC’s national list, she is not surprised that there are such allegations.
Source: Radio 702
