Cele ‘embarrassed’ to be a member of party’s NEC
Deputy Agriculture Minister and ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Bheki Cele says the ANC under President Jacob Zuma has failed South Africans and abdicated its governing duties to the courts.
Cele said the failure of the NEC to resolve membership and leadership issues forced disgruntled members to approach the courts. The courts had taken many decisions that the ANC leadership should have tackled.
“There are ANC government ministers who have to report about their core portfolio functions to the chief justice of the Constitutional Court, Mogoeng Mogoeng. This is an embarrassment because the courts are now taking over the function of the ANC NEC. I am embarrassed to be a member of this NEC.”
On Sunday, Cele told an ANC rally in Umlazi, near Durban, that Zuma had failed to unite the party and to take drastic action against corruption.
Cele had been invited to address KwaZulu-Natal ANC zones and branches that are taking the provincial executive committee to court in an effort to nullify the November 2015 provincial elective conference, which brought chairman Sihle Zikalala to power. The case will be heard by a full bench in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg from Wednesday to Friday.
Cele criticised Zuma for campaigning for his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him at the head of the ANC, saying “the ANC is not a royal dynasty and does not have kings [presidents] who must be succeeded by their queens [wives] or princes [sons]”.
He said: “In 2007, we fought with our limbs to ensure that the ANC tradition that the deputy president succeeds the incumbent is maintained. As a result of this, the current president succeeded former president Mbeki.
“We did this because Albert Luthuli had been a deputy president when he succeeded. He was in turn succeeded by his deputy, Oliver Tambo, when he stepped down. Tambo was succeeded by Nelson Mandela and Mandela was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki.”
Cele said it was strange that when it was time for Zuma to step aside, instead of maintaining the tradition, he said it was not ANC policy that the deputy should succeed an incumbent.
“Why all of a sudden he shows a desire to be succeeded by a woman, his wife? Why didn’t he say women were ready to lead in 2007? Why didn’t he say so ahead of the Mangaung conference ... ?”
Cele said he would make his preferred candidate known only after the nomination process opened in September. He said he agreed that those who were looting state resources should be prosecuted.