The ANC in North West has summoned the province’s deputy speaker, Tshepo Khoza, to appear before the provincial executive committee after the party discovered through social media that he allegedly forged his matric certificate.
Khoza was appointed deputy speaker after the May 29 elections. He is from the City of Matlosana Local Municipality, where he served on the mayoral committee responsible for public safety.
According to the circulated documents seen by Sunday World, Khoza, who is also the provincial chairperson of Sanco, allegedly submitted to his employers a matric certificate with a different ID number to the one on his payslips.
ANC spokesperson in North West, Tumelo Maruping, said the party did not know about the allegations until the matter surfaced on social media.
“Usually, before we consolidate candidates for the provincial legislature, we request comrades to submit qualifications. There is a criterion of qualifications that we want from the comrades. We then subject those qualifications to the institutions.
“The ANC on its own does not have the capacity to do the vetting, so we rely on the institutions to assist us with the vetting process,” he said.
Maruping said the information they had was that Khoza had a matric qualification. “Upon the vetting process, it then appeared as though he forged that matric certificate,” he said.
He said the ANC’s top five officials had summoned Khoza to appear before them to answer to the allegations.
He said matric was the minimum requirement for legislature candidates.
“If we find that what has been alleged is true, obviously he will have to recuse himself as the deputy speaker of the legislature.”
Maruping cautioned ANC members to refrain from disseminating personal details about individuals.
“Even if it’s not comrades of the ANC, anybody, because that can be very dangerous, things are now forged, so we are requesting that they refrain from doing those things,” he said.
According to Maruping, the ANC will communicate with the public once the officials have met with Khoza about what action they will take against him if the allegations against him are found to be true.
The spokesperson of Sanco in North West Mzukisi Jam slammed the allegations.
“In our view, this seeks to tarnish the image of both the chairperson and the organisation. At the moment, we cannot tell who is responsible for those papers that are circulating but what we can say is that it’s definitely someone who is embarking on witch-hunting, and the target is Sanco,” he said.
Jam said Sanco was not going to entertain the matter.
“To us, it is pure gossip and witch-hunting, and our interest is the general community that we are responsible for. We would like to make it clear that with the information circulating on social media, no one has approached us as an organisation formally or officially.”
Jam said the ANC and other alliance partners had not written to the organisation about the matter either.
“No one said anything to us, and we are of the very strong view that if there was any legitimacy regarding the information, the ANC as the leader of the alliance would have already made contact with us,” he said.
Khoza refused to comment.
“I am not allowed to comment,” he said.
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What is the worst that is likely to happen to him 🤔🤔
I hope the allegations are not true, because he seems like an honest and a law abiding citizen, I wish him courage and strength during this phase his going through.