Newly elected ANC North West chairperson Nono Maloyi has urged his critics to allow his culpable homicide case to be dealt with privately.
A 2018 culpable homicide case was provisionally withdrawn by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) but never struck off the roll. Maloyi was allegedly travelling on the night of September 1 2018 at high speed on the N12 near Klerksdorp when he crashed into another car in which one occupant died.
Ahead of the weekend's conference some called for Maloyi not to contest due to the matter still lingering about as he may still face charges in the future.
Speaking to Sowetan following the announcement on Monday, he said the case had been provisionally withdrawn by the NPA awaiting a final decision on whether they will prosecute or not.
“That is a private matter which must be attended to privately. We must not politicise it must and not mix it with matters of politics and so on because that thing was a road accident. Anybody can get involved in an accident, even yourself from where you are sitting,” he said.
According to the ANC's rules, members criminally charged for serious crimes, corruption or theft are barred from contesting positions in the party.
Those who are opposed to Maloyi are said to be pushing for him to step aside. On this, Maloyi said: “An accident can never be corruption, it can never be theft, it can never be money laundering and so on and so forth. So let's not mix these things.”
“I know that there are other people who wanted to use this thing for their own political benefit. It is quite unfortunate. But I hope as time goes on, people will understand not mix these things. If people want to talk about step aside, they must go and read what is step aside and what it says. Let’s just allow private matters to be dealt with privately and allow matters that affect the public to be dealt with separately,” he said.
Maloyi beat North West premier Bushy Maape for the top position. However, he assured that there would be no reshuffle in the province despite not being happy with the level of service delivery.
He added there would be intervention coming from the provincial level to assist in delivering services.
“We’re not going to be seized with matters of reshuffles and who goes in and who goes out. That is not our priority. Our priority is rebuilding structures, stabilising our governance both at provincial and local government.
“It's important for us and those in political leadership of the ANC and those deployed to focus more on providing quality service delivery to our people. We’re interested in bettering the lives of our people.”
Maloyi said he was not satisfied with the quality of service delivery in the North West.
“There are just too many challenges. If you go to some of these municipalities led by the ANC you will find a council fighting among themselves. Councillors submitting motions of no confidence against each other without even voting for taking the organisation into confidence.
“They are not focusing on serious issues such as service delivery issues that we are talking about. We therefore have a responsibility as the organisation to intervene and ensure that the caliber of people we deploy are people who know what it is that they need to do.
“There are many ways of intervening to ensure there is permanent stability both at a political level without reshuffling.”
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