ANC general manager Febe Potgieter-Gqubule has given Carl Niehaus 48 hours to respond to a notice of the party’s intention to suspend him from his post in secretary-general Ace Magashule’s office pending a disciplinary hearing into his alleged breach of the party’s personnel policies.

In a letter dated 19 January 2021, Potgieter-Gqubule said Niehaus had been advised on numerous occasions that his public comments and social media posts “are unbecoming of someone working in this high office, which has the primary responsibility of driving and coordinating the work of all structures of the ANC”.

Niehaus is known for making spirited and sometimes inflammatory statements in defence of the so-called RET forces, a faction loosely aligned to defend leaders such as former president Jacob Zuma and Magashule. Potgieter-Gqubule took issue with his recent comments on ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte.

Niehaus posted a statement last week on Twitter announcing he had been hospitalised due to Covid-19, which he said he wanted to deal with privately. He claimed “WMC media”, including Daily Maverick, Mail & Guardian, City Press and eNCA targeted him while he was “fighting for my life” with a “well-coordinated aggressive propaganda smear campaign”.

It’s unclear what he was referring to but Niehaus was mentioned as one of Daily Maverick’s “miscreants and moegoes of 2020” and in a Mail & Guardian opinion piece, “Who f***ed SA up?”

“I am saddened that even the Deputy Secretary General of the ANC, comrade Jessie Duarte, saw it fit to attack me, and undermine my long history as a 42 year veteran of the ANC in good standing, as well as my elected position as an NEC member of MKMVA, and MKMVA national spokesperson,” Niehaus said in his statement.

“This she did, knowing that when she was doing so, I was gravely ill. It was unnecessary and callous – I am deeply saddened by it.”

Niehaus was appointed to work in Magashule’s office in March 2019. Potgieter-Gqubule said his comments crossed “all boundaries expected from an ANC employee”.

“ANC staff members are expected to abide by the discipline of the organisation, and personal attacks by a member of staff on elected leadership – without even attempting to address the matter internally – is unprofessional, is not tolerated and is in violation of the [ANC Personnel Policy] Manual,” she continued.

Niehaus told Daily Maverick on Tuesday, “I do not respond to leaked letters. As a disciplined member of the ANC I will not respond whatsoever in public to this letter.”

He made his comments on Duarte after she appeared on JJ Tabane’s Power to Truth on eNCA. She was speaking on the “step aside” policy and radical economic transformation resolutions. Tabane asked whether conflicting comments from ANC members, such as Niehaus and MKMVA leader Kebby Maphatsoe, were deepening party divisions.

“In the top six of the ANC, there isn’t a disunity on these matters. We’re talking the same language. We’re saying let’s get the guidelines out. We’ve accepted and understood that’s where we are,” said Duarte.

“I’m not going to comment on Carl Niehaus. I’m not going to comment on Kebby Maphatsoe because I think firstly I would say that in the case of Carl Niehaus, he’s not a top leader of the ANC,” she continued.

In a statement after the MKMVA’s November 2020 NEC meeting, Niehaus said the ANC had no powers to force leaders who have been criminally charged to step aside before they had been found guilty, and that the MKMVA was concerned there had been attempts to water down ANC resolutions on radical economic transformation.

Duarte said, “The broader majority of the people in the ANC understand and accept that there are resolutions going back to the eighties that have never been implemented. On the issue of radical economic transformation, it’s in the process, it’s happening, but Covid also came along and nobody expected that.”

Niehaus has been a staunch defender of Magashule, the most high-profile ANC member facing calls to step down after he was charged with corruption, and in Niehaus’ statement last week he thanked the secretary-general for his “support, friendship and comradeship”.

In a letter signed in October 2020, however, Magashule distanced himself from Niehaus and his “RET forces” group.

“I have observed, with concern, that you are involved in activities that create the impression that you act on instructions from me. I wish to distance myself from your remarks regarding the NEC of which I am a member,” wrote Magashule, citing resolutions from previous party conferences.

“These resolutions bind and commit all members and structures of the ANC They are not, and cannot be perceived as, the dominion of ‘RET forces’ or any other factional grouping.”

Niehaus took a job in Magashule’s office after he served as an unofficial spokesperson for Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s run for ANC leader in 2017. He has been involved in multiple public spats with ANC leaders as well as a list of fraud claims.

He served as ANC spokesperson for six months before resigning in February 2009 after admitting to forging signatures while he led the Gauteng Economic Development Agency, and that he had borrowed substantial amounts of money from comrades without repaying them. DM