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A threat of legal action by Tshwane ANC regional chairperson Kgosi Maepa has lifted the lid on the internal strife that has partly hampered the ruling party’s efforts to regain control of the capital city.
Maepa has threatened to sue some members of the party for R5-million, accusing them of saying he was a member of the student wing of the Afrikaner Broederbond during his student days in the late 1990s.
Maepa’s lawyers, Makhubela Attorneys, have sent a letter of demand to Pheello Oliphant, saying he must name people involved in the circulation of a media post in which it is claimed that Maepa was the only student belonging to a right-wing organisation at the University of Pretoria in the late 1990s.
The ANC leader said that another member behind the allegations was Thabo Kupa, the former Gauteng secretary of the ANC Youth League and another member, Mzwakhe Mbatha.
Maepa said this week that it was not a secret that he served once in the board of the FW De Klerk Foundation, adding the ANC had told them to work with white people after the organisation “dissolved” the National Party.
“If some individuals have ambitions, they must go to ANC branches to lobby and wait for the regional conference of the ANC as outlined in the ANC constitution,” said Maepa.
“I don’t know the reasons for this character assassination and soiling of my image. I suspect those are nefarious actions by individuals outside the work of the ANC that we are tasked to do.”
But ANC insiders in the region said there was frustration with Maepa’s leadership, with his detractors saying he has failed to broker a deal with EFF leader Julius Malema to oust the DA from the metro.
Oliphant said he had written the post in 2017 and was now being used as part of factional battles in the ANC in Tshwane
“It looks like there is a storm around Kgosi Maepa there in Pretoria. The council was dissolved simply because he misled other councillors.
“Now councillors are without jobs,” said Oliphant, adding that his lawyers were responding to Maepa’s letter of demand and that he had since left Pretoria for the Eastern Cape.