ANC failed to back me over Guptas, claims Mbalula
Former minister of sports and recreation Fikile Mbalula has told the commission of inquiry into state capture how the ANC’s national executive committee failed to support him when he objected to the Guptas’ proximity to the party.
Mbalula took to the stand at the commission on Friday morning and detailed his appointment as minister in 2011.
According to Mbalula, he received a congratulatory call from Ajay Gupta before his appointment was confirmed by then president Jacob Zuma.
This prompted him to raise the issue of the Guptas at a meeting of the ANC’s NEC in August 2011.
“Instead one member of the NEC stood up and rubbished what I said. That member was defending the president and not what I was raising. The issue to me was not about the Guptas but a tendency I was dealing with. That tendency, if it creeps in, it will undermine the cause of what we stand for. So we need to undermine that tendency and put it aside. That member did not come to my defence, nobody came to my defence, and it is the fact that I raised it and it ended there. I raised it quiet emotionally and decisively, in the meeting for everybody to hear and that is why I think it was leaked to the press,” Mbalula told the commission.
The party’s current head of elections described the NEC’s inaction as “an act of cowardice”.
“Nobody who stood to raise the issue of the Guptas and its political ramifications for the ANC and the country in the meeting of the NEC. It was simply raised in corridors and so on. It helps nobody to raise a matter in the streets, but not in the meeting of the NEC. For me that constitutes an act of cowardice, for you to raise an issue and even to support what I said in the meeting. They found it in their wisdom to leak it to the press. Rather than us sitting discussing it and taking decisions about it.”