MATUBA: A THUG AND LIAR

It was an arresting revelation of how, despite the “renewal” of the ruling ANC since Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as president late last year, there are still some thugs within whose first instinct is to lie and deceive.

Take Meokgo Matuba, the secretarygeneral of the ANC Women’s League. After receiving awkward questions from journalist Qaanitah Hunter, Matuba sent her a picture of a gun.

It was very clearly meant as intimidation, even though Matuba’s wafer-thin excuse was that several people share her cellphone, and it wasn’t her.

But then, Matuba is a liar.

When she was asked by the Sunday Times about a meeting of the coalition of the wounded — held between her, former president Jacob Zuma, ANC secretarygeneral Ace Magashule and former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo — she claimed she wasn’t there.

“I did not see the former president,” she said. And yet, there she is in the photograph, standing next to Zuma.

Does the ANC Women’s League really believe it represents the interests of half the population by allowing the proud organisation, formed in 1931 and first headed by Charlotte Maxeke, to have someone like Matuba in its top structure?

It already has Bathabile Dlamini as its president. To save the last vestiges of its credibility, it can’t keep Matuba too.