Damage control — Mantashe plays down ‘excited’ Mbalula admission over Nkandla security upgrades 

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula’s comments about how the party concealed Jacob Zuma’s misdemeanours during his presidency have prompted an unfavourable response from fellow top 7 official Gwede Mantashe.

Instead of supporting these statements, Mantashe said Mbalula got “carried away” adding that the Secretary-General should be careful of what he says as a leader in the governing party.

“He saw your cameras and he got taken away and said things he shouldn’t have said. To me, this is what we need to deal with internally. When you lead, you count your words so that you don’t catch fire,” says Mantashe.

“He will learn in the trade, and he was just excited and said things he should not have said. As a leader, you must count your words so that you don’t catch fire. But he will learn,” Mantashe reiterated.

The ANC National Chair was speaking to SABC News on the sidelines of a visit to the AmaNdebele Royal House in Kwa-Mhlanga, Mpumalanga. This is part of an array of activities which will take place leading up to the party’s 112th birthday celebrations in Mbombela on Saturday.

Mbalula caused a row over comments he made on Sunday when he revealed that the party had misled Parliament to protect Zuma. Mbalula said the party lied in order to support Zuma when he was under fire for the upgrades done on his Nkandla Homestead in KwaZulu-Natal.

“We went to parliament and opened an ad hoc committee and said a swimming pool is a fire pool. The [then] police minister [Nathi Nhleko] was sweating, seeing that this was a lie, because it is difficult to explain lies. People have lost their careers because of that thing.”

Read more in Daily Maverick: ‘No court in the country interrogated Nkandla report’ – Nhleko

Mbalula took to X on Monday evening to clarify his comments regarding Zuma’s “fire pool”, saying he was speaking “just in case someone wants to deliberately twist” his words. 

He further went on to explain that his utterances should be understood as “political rally rhetoric” and reiterated that it would be important to also support Ramaposa in the case that he is “overrun by ANC enemies who are engaged  in baseless, untested or unproven claims”.

“I made general statements about how the ANC ‘defended’ former President JZ when he was accused of corruption and other official misconduct connected with Nkandla.

“First, we must agree that it was the duty of the organisation to fully understand the facts upon which the opposition parties base their corruption accusations and charges that followed before it could act.

“As such, the ANC, as I so eloquently argued, was duty bound to [allow] parliamentary structures to investigate the serious accusations.

“Such a move was precisely to protect the ANC President from being unfairly overrun by the malevolent opposition.

“What is important to expose here is that by affording the President due process of law, which was his right under our constitution, the ANC was protecting its president.

“I fairly reported that the matter was ventilated in the courts, as it was supposed to be, and the chips fell where the Constitutional Court said they should fall.”

Read more in Daily Maverick: Zuma’s new political party trick and the head-scratching horseplay of Men Saying Things

In 2014 then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found that Zuma “unduly benefited” from upgrades to his private Nkandla residence in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). In the ‘Secure in Comfort’ report Madonsela recommended that Zuma pay back at least part of the estimated R246-million spent on the improvements to the property not related to security.

However senior ANC members continued to back Zuma with Nathi Nhleko using his powers to do so.

During what became an infamous press briefing in 2015, Nhleko exonerated Zuma of all accountability over the upgrade costs at his Nkandla home.

An Nkandla ad hoc committee which was formed to interrogate Madonsela’s findings adopted Nhleko’s report that Zuma was not liable to pay back public money spent on his Nkandla home.

Nhleko’s report contradicted that of Madonsela.

In 2016, the Constitutional Court found that Zuma failed to uphold the constitution when he ignored a state order to repay some of the government funds used for upgrading his private residence.

The court also ruled that parliament, which is dominated by the ruling African National Congress, had failed in its obligations by not holding Zuma to account. DM