The ANC step-aside rule’s most famous champion and ANC Veterans League President Snuki Zikalala says the former liberation movement oldies will not let go of wanting to tighten the grip on wayward ANC leaders involved in criminal acts.
Zikalala said the League will push to influence the entire ANC National General Council (NGC) delegates to agree with them that Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula be given powers to force criminally-charged ANC leaders to step aside from parliament too.
Rule must expend to MP role
The veterans believe that the step aside must keep on being tightened until everyone toes the line. They will be scared of messing around, because criminality will put them on the streets.
At the moment, criminally charged cadres can step aside from being ministers or from party work. But they can continue in parliament as if nothing happened.
Zikalala wants this situation changed by the time the ongoing NGC ends on Thursday. The event is held in Birchwood Hotel, east of Gauteng.
“As you know currently you can only step aside if you are criminally charged. The issue is that the SG (Mbalula) cannot make you step aside from parliament if you are a public representative. So what we are saying is that the SG must have the right to say ‘you must step aside because you are criminally charged, and as a public representative in parliament’,” said Zikalala.
Current format has little impact against graft
“This is so that individuals must be scared to be involved in wrong things. People must not say ‘I am still going to remain in parliament, earning a good salary, so nothing is going to happen to me’. We want to change that, people must be afraid. So it is a punitive act, but also one that will make people not be involved in malfeasance.”
Pushed on whether this was not grossly unfair, since being charged did not mean one is guilty, Zikalala was having none of that. He said the veterans will press on for their view to find expression in the NGC.
“When they are not found guilty, you return them to their positions. Secondly, they can sue the police if the police have charged them wrongly.”
In this exclusive interview with the Sunday World, Zikalala also spoke on the SACP/ANC alliance. He expressed sadness that the relationship between ANC and SACP has reached a sad end.
This is as NGC delegates discuss whether or not to agree with the NEC resolution to end dual membership allowed between the two parties heading to the 2026 local government elections.
SACP relationship woes
The fraught relationship between the two longtime political allies was occasioned by the SACP 2024 special congress decision to contest elections independently from the ANC.
“We have met with the SACP as the veterans and pleaded with them to reconsider their conference resolution.They said they cannot change those resolutions because they are an independent organisation. Comrade Blade (Nzimande) said, ‘Let us call another urgent special congress so that we reconsider the past resolutions’. But they are refusing,” said Zikalala.
“We prefer that they should reconsider that decision. We do not want to come to deciding between the two. Because we are comrades, we were in the trenches together with them. We fought with them; we died with them. It is really unheard of, and it is unwarranted. It is very sad, the door is still open.
“They might still reconsider and will be welcomed back by the ANC. As you saw when (SACP 1st deputy general secretary) Madala Masuku was speaking on it (here at the NGC). People were not happy with his speech and heckled him, which is not nice. That is why we are saying let them come back home and we resolve issues that need to be resolved. Because we are fishing from the same pond, that is what we are saying.”
