Stalwart Mavuso Msimang resigns from ANC over ‘apartheid-style’ corruption

Simmering tension between the ANC’s Veterans League (ANCVL) and the mother body have begun playing out in the public domain with the abrupt resignation of stalwart Mavuso Msimang.

The deputy president of the Veterans League resigned on Wednesday citing endemic corruption and poor governance of the country.

“When we took over the government in 1994, we had the moral high ground, and the conviction that we would be able to root out the old-boy networks that had benefited from, and strangled, the apartheid economy.

“Yet, three decades later, the ANC’s own track record of corruption is a cause of great shame. The corruption we once decried is now part of our movement’s DNA. This has had dire consequences for the most vulnerable members of our society,” he said.

Msimang’s resignation is a blow to the ANC, which aims to retain its electoral majority in the 2024 general election. He spent more than 60 years serving the ANC, including in the armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, in the 1960s. He was the banned ANC’s chief of communications.

He has been a vocal critic of the ANC in recent years, and in 2022 called for President Cyril Ramaphosa to temporarily step down from his position until he was cleared of allegations of money laundering made by former spy boss Arthur Fraser after the theft of dollars at the president’s Phala Phala farm.

One source close to Msimang told Business Day that though he has resigned from the ANC he is “not going to be far from the political space, but won’t be joining another organisation”.

Veterans League president Snuki Zikalala acknowledged Msimang’s resignation while denying that the league’s members have been “undermining the ANC”.

“As the ANCVL, we have and will continue to raise issues of corruption internally in the organisation. Further, we will continue to engage at provincial and national levels in the list processes to take a stand against individuals who are implicated in corrupt activities, including those fingered by the Zondo commission, being part of election lists for provincial and national legislatures,” he said.

ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri called on members of the Veterans League to stop making disparaging public utterances about the mother body. “Decampaigning the ANC has serious implications for the public standing of the organisation,” he said.

“We reiterate our call on the veterans of the ANC to stop decampaigning the ANC and work through the structures of the organisation. The leadership of the ANC led by its president Cyril Ramaphosa have always availed themselves for counsel and direction by veterans and stalwarts.”