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ANC MP Makhosi Khoza is not backing down.
After being fired from a parliamentary committee because she “insulted some of her colleagues to the point that they no longer wanted to work with her”, Khoza compared herself to a wife in an abusive relationship.
“I’m still hoping that sanity would prevail but at some point I have to confront the reality that the ANC is in the Moral Intensive Care Unit.
"It is clinically dead. Only a miracle could rescue it. Is it time to pull the plug, kiss goodbye? I wonder. If it survives, will it return to its former glory?” she posted on her Facebook page today.
Khoza on Thursday paid the price for her outspoken criticism of President Jacob Zuma when she was fired as chairperson of the public service and administration portfolio committee.
Five ANC MPs in the committee boycotted a meeting on Tuesday. In a signed letter, they cited Khoza’s leadership as the key problem.
The five are Madala Ntombela, Sizani Dlamini-Dubazana, Regina Lesoma, Mervyn Dirks, and Wilma Newhoudt-Druchen.
Public Service and Administration Minister Faith Muthambi also failed to attend the meeting.
Party chief whip Jackson Mthembu said today that Khoza had insulted her colleagues in a WhatsApp group for ANC study group members.
There had also been a few acrimonious exchanges in committee meetings prior to that.
She accused colleagues of being “so desperate to be appointed ministers or deputy minister” and that they had no moral compass, he said.
“These utterances and other Facebook posts led to her alienating ANC members to the point where they could no longer work with her as their leader,” Mthembu’s spokesperson Nonceba Mhlauli told News24.
In the WhatsApp message, Khoza questioned Dlamini-Dubazana’s struggle credentials in the 1980s, and asked if she had learnt how to use a computer.
She also criticised Muthambi’s record in local government.
She said Dirks was a “successful DA recruit”, and Newhoudt-Druchen had accused her of things based on lies.
She said they were “breaking the ANC and the country” and that she “just wanted them to be normal”.
Khoza did not respond to text messages or phone calls on Friday.
Mthembu on Thursday said he received a directive from the ANC to relieve Khoza of her position as committee chairperson.
He cited an irretrievable breakdown of relations between herself and ANC MPs on the committee.
“The irretrievable breakdown of relations arises from her public utterances preceding the motion of no confidence vote in Zuma and her continued public attacks on ANC leadership and members of her ANC caucus who voted against the motion on August 8,” Mthembu’s statement read.
Her sacking as chairperson was with immediate effect and had been communicated to her.
She would remain an ANC MP pending the outcome of disciplinary action being taken against her in KwaZulu-Natal.
Mthembu also said the five MPs who boycotted the meeting were also guilty of ill-discipline.
Khoza believed she was being targeted because “I’m effective”.
“I’m a thorn in the ANC flesh for betraying our mission. I’m not capturable and corruptible,” she said in her post.
“When you get a promotion in the ANC today, chances are that you might be captured. When you are demoted, you must be doing something right. It sounds abnormal, Eish!” – Additional reporting by News24
