By: Edmond Lesito
Dear Comrade Mondli Gugungubele
Your wildly reported desperate and amateurish call for Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu to be removed from her position does no good for President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC. You put the person of the President into disrepute and spit on the integrity of the ANC. You do not run the Presidency of the country and you are not the Head of the State. It is a terrible act of disrespect for you to project an image of a weak President who moves slowly in side-lining those you have without political consciousness castigated and identified as his enemies.
You are creating an impression that you are a super-Minister who abuses proximity to the President and just thumb-suck who must be thrown out of Cabinet, especially those you resent, either for having been authentic leaders of the ANC or they are of a different gender from yours. You are telling the world that the ANC has no deployees in government but a mass choir that owes political life in the ANC to the state. Your thinking is politically shabby at best and cruel and politically vicious at worst. You are a candidate of serious cleansing through political education.
Your call is a textbook example of an attempt to flush-out the culture of debate in the ANC and in society. Your call represents a serious pushback of the fight against abuse of state power and corruption. Your irritation with Ramaphosa for not totally removing Sisulu from Cabinet raises eyebrows and maybe, historical questions. Did you as a person recommend the removal of Sisulu from Human Settlements and Water Sanitation? Did you expect at the time the President to remove Sisulu from the Cabinet? Why are you saying she should have been removed a long time ago?
The only recent Cabinet reshuffle was on 5 August 2021. Is it the reason why many believe that Sisulu was not called during the day by Ramaphosa to make her aware of his decision to shift her from Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation to Tourism but was only called a few minutes by the President, just before addressing the nation at 21h00?
Must we read political machinations Comrade Mondli now that you expressed publicly your irritation with the President? We can only park the reshuffle matter here for you to exercise your right to reply. I hope that your proximity to the President is not abused to deal with matters that are constitutional mandates of the Head of State.
We can only trust that we have a democratic President who is surrounded by deep-thinking democrats not easily agitated agents of baseless attacks.
In your interview with the Sowetan, you displayed political amateurism and called leaders of the ANC demanding accountability detractors of President Ramaphosa. I can only hope that the Integrity Commission of the ANC or the officials will give you an opportunity to explain your irresponsible and divisive utterances. You are now unmasking yourself as a factional campaigner that is hell-bent to suppress anything but CR22.
This is disparaging competition contextually informed by politics of gutter and I hope that Comrade Kgalema Motlanthe will have a lesson tailored for you.
Now that you seem to have time to sow divisions between the President and Cabinet members, you might utilize your time quite strategically and prepare a report on your meeting in December 2021 with the Hawks where you were asked to account for the corruption in Ekurhuleni during your tenure as Executive mayor. Please explain your involvement in the alleged corruption. You may also explain why you resigned from the Public Investment Corporation after you were so confident that you did nothing wrong. What did you see in the black and white piece of paper of the forensic inquiry that made you not walk away but run barefooted? A conversation can begin Comrade Mondli.
Back to Comrade Sisulu matter, I am happy that the Presidency has issued a statement disowning your lies and seeds of division you have planted and he essentially rebuffed your foolish encroachment of his executive powers. Your behaviour is that of a spoilt brat that was saying “Daddy, I do not like Aunty Lindiwe, please ask her to leave our home.” You are rough around the
edges and a candidate to be sent to the ANC political school and the National School of Government.
In the meantime, please mull over the following issues. The culture of the ANC and what binds the ANC? Must leaders of the ANC be muzzled when the National Question remains unresolved? Must leaders of the ANC be muted when money is glorified than servicing the wretched of our nation? Must the leaders of the ANC turn a blind eye when our country is burdened with foreign debt that it will surely find difficult to service and repay with an opportunity cost being the uplifting of the masses from the socio-economic quagmire they find themselves in? What do you represent, are you in the movement for self-aggrandizement? What is the difference between you and Derek Hanekom, an alleged agent with dodgy struggle credentials who is obsessed with the role true revolutionaries, the Sisulus played in the anti liberation struggle? What did Comrade Lindiwe do?
