The ANC Women’s League has explained why it has decided to not publicly support its former president Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, during her court appearances for corruption.
Mapisa-Nqakula was charged with corruption after allegedly accepting a bribe from a service provider. She has always cut a lone figure whenever she appeared in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court for the trial.
Former speaker of parliament Baleka Mbete was the only prominent ANCWL member who attended a court appearance while the rest of its members stayed away, raising concern about the unity of the party’s women’s structure.
The league also explained why it has not openly thrown its weight behind its treasurer-general and Free State Premier Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae when she was accused of corruption in the media.
A service provider Patrick Phuti has claimed that he gave her and her husband Lawrance Mathae bribes and bought them a Mercedes Benz V-Class minibus. The allegations they denied.
ANCWL secretary-general Nokuthula Nqaba said the renewal agenda of the ANC was the reason why not a single women’s league leader has been in court to give moral support to Mapisa-Nqakula. This was also the reason the league remained silent when the story of Letsoha-Mathae broke.
Speaking on Sunday World Engage last week, Nqaba said the women’s league wanted nothing to do with corruption.
She said they were fully committed to the renewal agenda and also mindful of being caught repeating mistakes of the past.
Nqaba acknowledged that the league has blundered before by supporting people facing serious charges without knowing the facts. A case in point was the rape trial of the then ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma in 2005.
The women’s league supported Zuma instead of the alleged rape victim, leaving it with a permanent dent on its reputation as many questioned the authenticity of its cause to champion women’s causes.
With Mapisa-Nqakula and Letsoha-Mathae’s woes, the women’s league has elected to be on caution’s side and stick to the renewal rule book of the parent body – the ANC.
“Do not act against our ethos and principles and expect that the ANC will cover you; we are not going to do that. People commit those things on their own. We are not there, and at the end of the day, we are being asked why we are quiet. We know nothing,” said a stern Nqaba.
“It is not for us as this leadership to judge, but we must respect the process so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, such as those we committed during Zuma’s rape trial.”
Nqaba said that because Letsoha-Mathae is a national official of the league responsible for its finances, they had to summon her to explain herself.
The move was not meant to pass judgement on her but for her to take her fellow leaders into confidence.
But the ANCWL’s involvement ended there, and it has left the matter in the hands of the parent body as the entity that deployed Letsoha-Mathae to government.
“We have called her; we listened to what she said, and then we agreed that ‘comrade, because you are deployed by the ANC, you will have to go back to the ANC and explain yourself in the integrity commission’,” said Nqaba.
“We explained the options at her disposal so she could decide what was right to do and go to the leadership and explain what she had explained to us.
“As the women’s league, we will wait for all those processes to reach finality. Only then will we be able to express a firm opinion on the matter.”
As for Mapisa-Nqakula, the league was following a resolution of the ANC that is part of the renewal agenda prohibiting party members from using the ANC name and party logo and colours to support cadres alleged to have committed serious crimes.
“The resolution goes on that if you are being alleged to have done something wrong, be it in the private space or public space, you must take full responsibility as an individual and face the might of the law.
“It is also good not to be part of these things so that we do not mess up the things that are taking place there in a court of law. We must allow justice to play out because we might end up saying things that might worsen the situation,” said Nqaba.
“What we have then decided is that approach of not entangling ourselves in such issues (of Mapisa-Nqakula and Letsoha-Mathae). What we are clear on is that we do not want to be associated with corrupt activities.”
