By Simon Nare
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has defended former international relations minister and ANC heavyweight Dr Naledi Pandor for her remarks that the country lacked leadership.
Mbalula told reporters that he was taken aback by people who were calling for Pandor to be discipled, when she was in fact articulating ANC policy.
While delivering a lecture at the centenary celebration of former ANC Women’s League president Gertrude Shope, Pandor said Shope would be dismayed by ANC corruption and its decline.
“We have lost our glory; the people are looking at us with horror and shame. We need the copper-wire scourer, not the sponge, to clean the pot. Renewal must be practical, not rhetorical,” she said.
In sharp contrast to his reaction to ANC MP Malusi Gigaba and suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu who recently criticized the party, Mbalula said that many have distorted what Pandor said, arguing that she was reinforcing ANC policy.
“She was correct that we need a new cadre of renewal which is correct. What mme Naledi was saying there, I read in the newspapers that Naledi must be disciplined, for what?
“Because she is saying the right things that the leadership of the ANC and its veterans are expected to say. To remind us all the time that these things have got to happen,” he said.
The secretary-general said he had listened to Pandor and there was nothing to reprimand her about because she said all the right things that the ANC stood for.
He called on other members of the party to reinforce that message.
However, on the same breath Mbalula warned that any ill-discipline by members who spoke out of tune in the public would not be tolerated.
He also hit out at critics of the recent first convention of the National Dialogue, who had complained about the ANC hijacking the platform.
Mbalula said that since the concept was introduced, it has always been a citizen-led approach.
He also shot down suggestions that there was a fallout between former president Thabo Mbeki and President Cyril Ramaphosa after the Thabo Mbeki Foundation pulled out of the dialogue.
Mbalula said Mbeki has also raised his views during national executive committee meetings as an ex officio member and these views were known within the party.
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