The top six African National Congress (ANC) leaders have rallied around President Cyril Ramaphosa following what has been described as an intense national executive committee (NEC) meeting.
The meeting came on the back of clashes between different factions in the party, with Ramaphosa saying that there was even an orchestrated attack by those pushing back against his drive to root out corruption in the state.
Although they sometimes contradicted each other during Monday’s unusual briefing, all top six members of the ANC threw their weight behind President Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa had in the weeks leading up to the ANC NEC meeting faced a barrage of public attacks through letters and social media posts from some party leaders calling into question his legitimacy in the face of the ongoing legal case about his CR17 fundraising activities.
However yesterday, even secretary-general Ace Magashule spoke glowingly about Ramaphosa despite having been critical of him in the past and not supporting his rise to the presidency.
“As the president and the statement says, we have discussed the letter to the president. By the way, before the letter by the president was penned, we communicated between myself and the president because we keep that interaction, we keep in touch.”
ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe criticised former President Jacob Zuma for being among those who wrote scathing letters to Ramaphosa following his utterances that the party needed to deal with the rot in its ranks.
Ramaphosa promised to use his office as president of the country to ensure that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) was equipped to deal with corrupt and criminal individuals, even hinting at special COVID-19 prosecutions to fast track the process.
BURDEN OF LEADERSHIP
Ramaphosa said that he was not easily insulted and did not view Zuma’s critique of his leadership in this light.
He was asked during a briefing about what action the party would take against the former president.
In a letter which was drafted last week, Zuma described Ramaphosa’s approach to addressing corruption in the ANC as flawed and warned that it could destroy the party.
But Ramaphosa said that the party would not stoop to the level of subjecting his predecessor to disciplinary action over a letter.
“The burden of leadership is that you must be able to get members and others to be able to express themselves. Sometimes, you don’t like what they say and as they say, ‘the highest treetops catches the fiercest wind’ and I take it as par for the course.”
Meanwhile, Mantashe said that it was not acceptable for an ANC official to attack their predecessor or successor.
“It is not done because there must be a particular relationship between a successor and a predecessor.”
