Luthuli House ambushes ANC chief whip Mdumiseni Ntuli 

ANC chief whip Mdumiseni Ntuli is being blamed for the chaotic meeting at Luthuli House, which allegedly saw ANC MPs revolting against party secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, and chairperson Gwede Mantashe walking out of the powwow in a huff. 

Two senior ANC members alleged that Ntuli “dropped the ball” and allowed himself to be pawned by Luthuli House, saying he should not have taken charge of the meeting. 

According to the two members, the convention of the meeting of the ANC caucus with Luthuli House last Friday was orchestrated by the party’s secretary-general’s office. They invited him, as leader of the caucus in parliament together with ANC MPs, to the party’s headquarters on the same day, without granting him an opportunity to thoroughly prepare for it. 

It appears that Ntuli intended to brief the party’s national executive committee (NEC), a body that has yet to be convened despite mounting anticipation. However, caucus members seized the agenda during the rushed meeting and started complaining about the ANC’s failure to boot the DA out of the government of national unity (GNU) for embarrassing and humiliating the party in public. 

The irate MPs cited the DA’s opposition to the Bela Act and Expropriation Act and its court challenge of the approval of the budget as the reasons the blue party should have been kicked out of the GNU. 

They argued that the DA’s decision to take the Affirmative Action Law to court should be the last straw to break the camel’s back. 

The chief whip, argue the two ANC members, lost control of the proceedings, allowing Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters, to dominate the discussion. 

The person said, “Comrade Sompisi (Ntuli’s clan name) was ambushed. He was in the mood of briefing the NEC, which these Luthuli House people do not want to convene, so they hijacked his thinking and took over. The chief whip dropped the ball there; he should not have allowed that, caucus is run by him but he allowed people from Luthuli House to bully him.”  

However, Ntuli told Sunday World that the meeting was convened by his office.  

“Usually the caucus sits on Thursday, but that Thursday was a public holiday (May 1), so we decided to have the meeting on Friday because we wanted to make it convenient for all our members, because we are in recess, we said, ‘let us convene it in Johannesburg because it is easy for everyone to travel to Gauteng in and out’.” 

He added that “the only difference is that we invited the SG (Mbalula) to come and address the meeting; sometimes it’s the president and other officials”. 

He said there was no dominant view that MPs wanted the DA booted out of the GNU. “The MPs were sharing their own experience of what is happening in various portfolio committees and the conduct of the DA in plenary in parliament. 

For example, he said, “When we adopt reports during declarations, and it is coordinated, the DA will say in their declaration that they accept the report, and now that we are part of the government, we believe that the mess that happened over 30 years will be addressed.  

“You know that language. They do that all the time; whether it is the state of the nation address or other debates, they will preface their input by casting aspersions on the ANC-led government.” 

“What the MPs were saying is that the way in which we are treated by the DA in parliament is problematic.  

“You cannot conclude that this is a party that is in government, which understands how to relate to its partners in the GNU. The intensity made it look like it was a lobby to kick the DA out of the GNU.” 

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Setumo Stone, Queenin Masuabi, Mawande Amashabalala