By: Sello Thelestane
ANC members have written to the Secretary-General’s office and requested that disciplinary action be instituted against President Cyril Ramaphosa for the Nasrec vote-buying.
The members held a press briefing on Monday where they spoke about how in the run-up to the 54th National Conference at Nasrec, “an extraordinary, and totally alien, thing to the history and culture of the ANC happened.”
They said Ramaphosa obtained funding from private parties to contest an internal ANC election for the organisation’s Presidency.
The group added that Ramaphosa used the ”CR 17 Campaign”, which he established to advance his presidential ambitions, as the fundraising and fund distribution tool.
“None of this is any longer under dispute, it is common cause that this was done, as established in two court hearings. The African National Congress is, as a consequence, faced with a serious legitimacy crisis with regards to the election of President Ramaphosa and the current National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC. The use of money in order to influence conference outcomes is indeed a very serious matter. As a consequence of the actions of President Ramaphosa and his ”CR 17 Campaign”, it has become more pronounced and insidious,” the group said.
“In this context, we, as concerned ANC members in good standing who have the best interests of the ANC at heart, decided to file an application through the Office of the Secretary-General of the ANC, to the effect that disciplinary proceedings must be instituted against President Ramaphosa for having obtained and used private funding with the expressed intention to influence the outcomes of the ANC’sANC’s 54th National Conference leadership elections,” they added.
The members said they were deeply disappointed by the cavalier and self-serving conduct of Ramaphosa, who, as a member of the ANC, knows that it is illegal to utilise money to influence the outcome of internal leadership elections in the ANC.
The group said it was unprecedented in the 109-year history of the ANC for a candidate to openly accept and encourage the raising of money from private and business sources to get himself elected and go to extraordinary lengths to protect the identity of those who funded his campaign.
“We are convinced that President Ramaphosa is doing this, and is using and abusing our courts in order to conceal the identity of his funders because knowledge about who they are will reveal a comprehensive network of business interests to whom he is as a consequence of their funding beholden and captured to. These unknown private funders are on an ongoing basis benefitting from his Presidency that they have bought for him,” the group said.
The members added that the National Executive Committee (NEC) has done nothing about the matter and turned a blind eye.
“In fact, the ANC NEC are looking the other way and are all the time prepared to cover up the actions of President Ramaphosa at all costs for our beloved Liberation Movement. We believe that this is happening because there are members of the current ANC NEC who benefitted – together with President Ramaphosa – from the money that he raised and used in order to influence the leadership elections of the 54th National Conference of the ANC. They are therefore fundamentally conflicted,” the group said.
The group added that there is a prima facie case of breach of ANC policy, and of the ANC Constitution that Ramaphosa has to answer.
“The details of why we say this is contained in our Application that we have lodged with the Office of the Secretary General for the urgent attention of the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) of the ANC. It is important to re-iterate that the ANC, specifically the National Disciplinary Committee, has no choice. Once an Application of this nature has been lodged, it must institute a disciplinary process. The fact that our Application was filed a considerable period ago, on the 18th of August 2021, and that no tangible action had yet been taken is a reason for serious concern,” the group said.
