Newly elected ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula wants to broker a peace deal between ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa and his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.
“We are not going to leave Comrade JZ as a former president and our leader alone," he said.
“We are going to engage with him. We are going to have a sit-down with him and we are going to understand him.
“We know the sentiment he has expressed in the public domain, but we choose not to engage with him in [the] public domain. He is our leader.
“He came to conference as a delegate but to us he has a standing and we are going to engage with him at that level. We are going to do that with utmost humility,” Mbalula told the media during a briefing about the preparations for the party's January 8 celebrations in Bloemfontein on Sunday.
Mbalula, who also serves as roads and transport minister, said his role as party secretary-general required him to unite the party and to speak to those he would ordinarily have preferred not to have spoken to.
“It’s a pity Carl Niehaus left before I arrived otherwise I would also be sitting with him. Not as Mbalula on Twitter but as secretary-general, but he has left,” joked Mbalula.
Zuma and Ramaphosa have been at each other’s throats since the last years of Zuma’s tenure as the party and SA’s president.
Ramaphosa described the Zuma term of office as the “nine wasted years” much to the displeasure of his predecessor and Zuma’s supporters.
Zuma initiated court prosecution proceedings on the eve of the ANC electoral conference, accusing Ramaphosa of being an “accessory” in the leaking of a confidential medical document about him to the media.
The case is linked to Zuma’s long-running but so far unsuccessful campaign to remove prosecutor Billy Downer, who is pursuing the ex-president on corruption charges related to the 1990s arms deal.
Zuma’s JG Foundation released a statement on December 15 saying, “President Cyril Ramaphosa has been charged in a private prosecution with the criminal offence of being accessory after the fact in the crimes committed by among others Advocate Downer namely, breaching the provisions of the [National Prosecuting Authority] NPA Act”.
“The serious crimes for which Mr Ramaphosa has been charged with in a court of law carry the sentence of 15 years in prison,” it added.
Last month, Ramaphosa threatened legal action against Zuma if he did not withdraw a summons to privately prosecute the president.
In a letter to Zuma from the state attorney, Ramaphosa warned him of a possible punitive costs order unless he retracted.
Ramaphosa, through the state attorney, had told Zuma the sole purpose of the private prosecution was to block him from being re-elected as ANC president at the ANC’s national elective conference in Nasrec in December.
Zuma Foundation spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi declined to comment, saying he did not speak on ANC-related matters.
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