Johannesburg - ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula has called on the party’s political leaders implicated in state capture allegations to refrain from dragging the name of the organisation with them.
Mbalula was briefing the media about the state of the ANC’s campaign for the general elections and the impact the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture was having on the party, after some of its top politicians were implicated in allegations of fraud and corruption.
Mbalula described some of the testimony at the commission as horrendous but important as it would enable the ANC-led government to clean out the rot that took root over the years.
He called on all those implicated to face the music on their own and not drag the ANC and its image with them.
“If Mbalula is implicated in the commission and it involves exchanging of money and corruption, he must answer, because the ANC did not send him to be corrupt. When he was doing things in the dark, the ANC surely did not say ‘go minister and be corrupt’. People must answer.
“When we say we want to run a clean government and some of our representatives are doing wrong things, the ANC cannot take collective responsibility about it,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula said the party was still dealing with perception that it was reluctant to deal with corruption, which he said the party was working to improve under President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“When we came from (Nasrec), Ramaphosa talked about the new dawn, which is not an ideology. It is the era we are in, the commitment to undo the wrongs. We are on the path of mending and that path is not easy,” he said.