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Pityana slams 'untrustworthy' Zuma, says he should step down

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Sipho Pityana. Picture: Muntu Vilakazi/File
Sipho Pityana. Picture: Muntu Vilakazi/File

The funeral of former sports minister, Reverend Makhenkesi Stofile, became a political battlefield as one of his close family friends lambasted President Jacob Zuma, calling for him to step down. 

Sipho Pityana stole the limelight when he tore into Zuma and the ANC leadership as he was paying tribute to Stofile during the special official funeral service held in Alice at the University of Fort Hare yesterday.

He said unlike "some" Bra Stof ­– as the former Eastern Cape premier was affectionately known –  showed great respect for public office and that in Alice you would not find "a palace worth over R250 million", a reference to upgrades at Zuma's Nkandla homestead. 

"When the Constitutional Court makes a finding that you broke your Oath of Office, it means is that you are honourable no longer. What it means is that you are untrustworthy," Pityana said. 

He said when Zuma addressed the nation on April 1 following the watershed Constitutional Court finding against him in the Nkandla matter he failed to rise to the occasion. 

At the time of his death Stofile had been worried about the state of the organisation and its trajectory and warned it would lose Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. 

"Let Stofile's cry for the restoration of our movement to its former glory not  be in vain. I know we are a movement in denial. We blame negative and hostile media.

We say it's because western governments are driving an agenda for regime change. We say it's clever blacks who are ill-disciplined  and arrogant. But comrade Stof would have none of it," he said. 

Pityana said cadres of Stofile's ilk were sidelined  in the ANC in favour of a different kind of cadre who sees in the ANC an opportunity to get benefits and proximity to resources. 

Several secretary-general reports to various congresses and policy conferences of the ANC commented about the crisis the organisation was in but nothing was being done. 

"So we must ask the question, do we have leaders of the revolution or do we have full-time thieves and looters?" Pityana said.

He said there was no doubt that the balance of forces had changed and were in favour of the forces of corruption with both the movement and the state having been captured.

"Unless drastic steps are taken today, in 2019 we will come down to 40%," he said. 

He  added that many veterans and ANC members had tried to raise issues with the leadership in vain.

Stofile had submitted letters to the ANC raising his concerns but all those letters went unanswered, he said.   

ANC leaders who showed disdain for Chapter 9 institutions, the courts and the media were not spared by Pityana who had the thousands of mourners on the edges of their seats with most approving of his utterances. 

Pityana called for a new leadership of the ANC and supported calls for an early elective conference of the party. 

"Leadership is about responsibility. I am very disappointed that the president was not here because I had prepared this speech for him. If the president was here I would have asked him as my leader. I would have pleaded with him, I would have begged him. 

"I would have prayed and said, my big brother Nxamalala [Zuma's clan name] please step down," he said to wild cheers of the crowd which comprised mainly of ANC members in party regalia. 

Directing his words to ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe who sat in the front row along with ANC treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize and national chairperson Baleka Mbete, Pityana said those who took real responsibility would fall on their sword. 

"So the leadership that has got us to the crisis we are in must also accept that they are not capable of taking us out of it," he said. 

After his speech Pityana got a standing ovation from the entire hall with the masses breaking into a song ixesha lisondele, meaning, "the time is up" while ANC leaders sat down looking stone-faced.  

He said the ANC had ceded its moral high ground to opponents especially on matters of constitutionality. He said when he joined as a young boy the ANC had been a movement that advocated and respected the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers. 

"No less a person than the president of our movement and our country takes every opportunity to show nothing but disdain and contempt for our Constitution... which ANC is this, without any conference resolution that makes statements that attack judges as counter-revolutionaries.  Which ANC is this, that attacks and undermines Chapter 9 institutions?" Pityana asked.

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