NEC ‘just as guilty as JZ’
COMMITTEE ALBATROSS AROUND SA’S NECK, SAYS MENTOR ‘For them, it’s not about country, it’s about personal interests.’
Former ANC parliamentarian Vytjie Mentor warns that ruling party national executive committee members can’t be trusted when it comes to removing Jacob Zuma because they are as guilty as he is. Mentor said the party’s top leadership allowed Zuma to bring the country to its knees and were, therefore, complicit for the mess that the country was in.
Mentor said those who tabled motions of no confidence against Zuma did so “just to be recorded in the history book as having stood up to oppose him”.
She said the recent motion tabled by ANC policy specialist Joel Netshitenzhe and the previous no-confidence motion proposed by NEC member and former minister of tourism and environmental affairs Derek Hanekom were merely meant to redeem themselves as they knew that their efforts would be defeated by pro-Zuma NEC members.
“Zuma has got the personal files of each one of the NEC members.
“That NEC collectively and individually are an albatross around the necks of South Africans. They have no capability to free themselves from it. Whatever Zuma had done wrong, he had done it with them,” Mentor said.
“The people of South Africa are the ones to take off the albatross around their necks, not the ANC NEC. Those opposed to the appointment of a commission of inquiry into state capture don’t want the commission because it would expose them more than Zuma.”
Mentor suggested a new political vision for South Africa which should come from the people. “The ANC NEC is not going to give the people the good news they had been yearning for. For them, it is not about the country, not about people, but about individual interests.” Mentor called for a constituent assembly of all parties, civil society organisations, individuals and other interested people to thrash out a political solution. She said that in the process, parliament should be dissolved and all individuals should forfeit their privileges and powers when they join the assembly, which should be overseen by the chief justice. She said the constitution should be amended so that the president of the country was elected directly instead of by the National Assembly, where the ANC dominates. The outspoken Mentor was sidelined after she blew the whistle on the Gupta’s practice of hiring Cabinet ministers on behalf of Zuma. The Guptas offered her the position of minister of public enterprises on condition that she dropped the SAA route to India in their favour. She claimed all that happened while Zuma was in another room at the Guptas’ Saxonwold mansion. –
Zuma has got the personal files of each one of the NEC members