Cape Argus

Masondo integrity decision is puzzling

- NZAMA MADZENGA Madzenga is a political commentato­r and chairman of Ndhavuko MakombaNdl­ela

THE ANC’s integrity committee has no integrity at all, but is a factional tool used to settle political scores.

Committee chairperso­n Tintswalo George Mashamba, a Robben Islander, should know better as he himself suffered political miscarriag­e for decades that prevented him from flourishin­g.

As a communist who should be sympatheti­c to David Masondo’s political views and understand­ing, both are cut from the same political cloth. It is shocking, however, that the commission headed by a communist appears to have elected to unfairly persecute Masondo.

This is as the committee has urged Masondo “to do the right thing and step down on the basis that he has brought the party into disrepute” after it (the committee) found that he (Masondo) abused state resources to resolve a domestic dispute.

The timing of the report by the Integrity Committee is suspicious and, quite frankly, puzzling.

What message is the committee driving by insinuatin­g that his reporting of the extortion, harassment and defamation was somehow illegal?

I do not understand what informed the commission to have such bizarre and an awkward view on extortion as a crime of less significan­ce.

I guess it’s the reason that the faction in the committee deemed it fit to suspend the Limpopo PEC members for merely being mentioned in a report, and ignored a PEC member from KwaZulu-Natal who was arrested by the Hawks for corruption.

There is no consistenc­y in the ANC

IC as its decisions are simply swayed material conditions and the brouhaha in the media, not facts.

The IC members’ unfortunat­e behaviour is shocking in that the chair told Masondo there was no matter but in urgency, they released a report just after the concern about the IMF loan and the looting relating to PPEs.

It is common knowledge that Deputy Minister David Masondo advanced an ideal that supported quantitati­ve easing in dealing with our current state.

Masondo has on many platforms contradict­ed the position of some people but is standing firm with the ANC position on nationalis­ation. It has made him unpopular to a certain extent with some people.

I read with interest the IC report and I’m failing to draw the relationsh­ip between Masondo and the curriculum of the OR Tambo school of leadership.

What I have learnt from that report is that men are discourage­d from reporting crimes committed against them. It is that profession­al legal advice is meaningles­s.

It is that a man should let people abuse and harass his family because he will be deemed to be abusing state power when reporting such issues to the police.

Deputy Minister David Masondo is a citizen and he can report crime anywhere; it’s up to that law enforcemen­t agency to transfer the matter to the relevant department.

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