Magashule no longer an ace up anyone’s sleeve

The ANC dealt itself a bad hand when it kept Ace Magashule in its top pack at its National Conference in December last year. Against the odds, Magashule was voted in to the powerful position of secretarygeneral, just as the party rid itself of Jacob Zuma, the man he so staunchly supported. At the time of his election to the ANC’s big six, Magashule – as former Free State premier – had already been implicated via the leaked Gupta emails for allegedly redirecting R30m intended for a Free State dairy project, through a web of Guptarelated companies to pay for a Gupta wedding.

Since then numerous other allegations have been made against him. Perhaps the most damning is the recent one by former Free State economic development MEC Mxolisi Dukwana that Magashule took him to the Saxonwold Gupta compound where Tony Gupta set out to bribe him with an extraordinary amount of money to sign a deal which would have been worth, in the short term, some R140m.

Dukwana has gone to great lengths, including a secret Anton Pillar High Court order, to obtain documentation to back up his allegations.

That documentation was nowhere to be found and it seems increasingly likely that it is lying at the bottom of a Free State paper shredder. But, Dukwana is adamant he has more dirt and more proof to dish up to the Zondo Commission into state capture.

Too many people have remained in positions of party, public and private power, despite overwhelming evidence linking them to the Gupta state capture project. It must be increasingly embarrassing for the party to have Magashule in such a powerful position as more and more evidence mounts against him and more people within his own party continue to point fingers.

Surely one of the reasons the party shed its former figurehead was because it wanted to appear more palatable to the voters in the 2019 elections. The ANC could be in no doubt that if it kept a scandal-plagued Zuma at the helm it would haemorrhage votes.

It may well be time that the party showed some real backbone and rid itself of others who can only harm it in the short- and long-term.

Magashule should be top of that list. He is no longer an ace up the sleeve of the ANC but rather a joker in its pack.

It may well be time that the party showed backbone and rid itself of [those] who can only harm it