“We did not believe former president Thabo Mbeki when he said we are giving the country to the dogs,” ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Collen Malatji said. They are now falling on the butcher’s knife as a punishment for electing former president Jacob Zuma.
Zuma declared in December that he will vote and advocate for the newly founded Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, rather than the ANC.
Zuma is currently the head and face of the MK Party, which has stated that he will run for president.
According to Malatji, the ANC should have listened to Mbeki when he suggested Zuma was not the best leader for the party.
“No one knows the Nkandla fellow better than President Thabo Mbeki, who was his deputy. We didn’t trust him when he said we’d give the country to the dogs. We didn’t listen the first time, but I believe we’ll learn to do so this time.”
On Thursday, Malatji addressed the media at the ANC’s headquarters, Luthuli House, in Johannesburg.
Mbeki, the second democratic president after Nelson Mandela, was ousted from office in 2008, and Zuma was elected president the following year.
He has also expressed his belief that Zuma cannot be trusted.
“Zuma is showing us flames already, a political party that is not even a year old but is highly funded by forces of regime change, the people that Mbeki told us that they are the enemies of the revolution,” he went on to say.
Zuma, according to Malatji, is a “very disruptive” old man who wants to treat the MK Party like a family party.
“It is clear, even in his party, he fires people, he even fired the founder of the party, he is firing everyone because we know that the party is an inheritance of Duduzile (Zuma’s daughter) and the family, not a party for the people,” he went on to say.
He stated that their current focus is on winning the 2024 national and provincial elections on May 29.
Last Monday, MK Party removed Jabulani Khumalo, the party’s founder, as part of “cleansing itself.”
Zuma will face the ANC’s disciplinary committee on Tuesday for allegedly violating the party’s constitution by supporting another party.
