Dlamini Zuma stands by vote-buying allegations against Mbalula - TimesLIVE
Former minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is still insisting ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula bribed delegates at the elective conference which saw President Cyril Ramaphosa elected as the leader of the party for a second term.
Mbalula was elected the party’s secretary-general at the same conference in 2022.
He has taken Dlamini Zuma to court, claiming her allegations are defamatory. He is seeking a court order compelling her to retract and apologise for the allegations and wants the court to find Dlamini Zuma liable to pay damages to him.
Dlamini Zuma made the bribing remarks on the African Renaissance Podcast, hosted by former EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. In the interview, she accused Mbalula of vote-buying during the ANC’s 2022 elective conference.
She was adamant in her court papers that “the use of the money was to ensure he [Mbalula] and the current president of the ANC and the country [Ramaphosa] were elected”.
In her answering affidavit, Dlamini Zuma stands by her statement, saying there are many people in the ANC who witnessed Mbalula dishing out money. She said some of them “fear for their lives and are reluctant to come out”.
[Dlamini-Zuma] cannot point to or provide any shred of evidence regarding these spurious and unfounded allegations. They are false and made with the sole purpose of lowering my standing in the eyes of the public
The urgent application will be heard before the high court in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
“I only publicly provided a specific instance relating to the applicant [Mbalula], which is common knowledge, and the applicant knows he did it; there was a queue at the clinic, not of patients but of people lined up to receive the cash that the applicant was distributing to buy votes,” Dlamini Zuma says in court papers.
She says there is a problem in the ANC, with leadership outcomes decided through the buying of votes.
Mbalula in his court papers denies the allegations.
“[Dlamini Zuma] cannot point to or provide any shred of evidence regarding these spurious and unfounded allegations. They are false and made with the sole purpose of lowering my standing in the eyes of the public,” Mbalula contends.
Dlamini Zuma in her court papers attached an affidavit of Mandla Sibiya, who supported her claim against Mbalula. In the affidavit, Sibiya says he was an ANC delegate during the 2022 ANC conference and was there when “Mbalula was distributing money to us as delegates”. Sibiya says he benefited from the distribution of funds.
“[Mbalula] knows well that it happened, and so many people can testify to it in the event that the matter becomes a trial, which the applicant ought to have anticipated before launching these motion proceedings,” says Dlamini Zuma.
Speaking to journalists during an ANC election campaign last week, Ramaphosa said he was aware of the rumours of vote-buying during the ANC conference, and it was something the leadership of the party was “completely against”.
Dlamini Zuma argues for the application to be dismissed from the urgent roll, pointing to a defect in the case: that Ndlozi, “as the only party capable of removing the content”, was not cited as a respondent.
She describes the application as an attempt by Mbalula to evade political responsibility and robust and uncomfortable internal ANC debate by resorting to “legal obfuscation”.
