Ministers in ding-dong battle over Jacob Zuma

Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota has hit back at cabinet colleague Zola Skweyiya, who accused him of undermining the ruling party by attacking Jacob Zuma in an interview with The Times last week.

Lekota, chairman of the ANC, said yesterday: “His complaint is that I corrected a fallacious allegation [about a political conspiracy against Zuma] in public. I can’t correct it under a bed in my house, in secret, because [then] the public would not know the truth.”

Social Development Minister Skweyiya — in a letter to ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe that was distributed to the party’s national executive committee — expressed concern at Lekota’s “anti-ANC behaviour”.

He reportedly said that he viewed Lekota’s behaviour as “unacceptable, un-comradely and totally anti-ANC”.

Lekota had accused ANC deputy president Zuma of lying. He said Zuma had asked to be fired from the cabinet in 2005 (after his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was convicted) because, Zuma said, resigning would have given the impression that he was admitting guilt whereas he was not.

Lekota also said Zuma went behind the party’s back in dealing with Shaik’s Nkobi Holdings.

He told The Times yesterday that Skweyiya was misguided.

“First of all … the allegations that there is a conspiracy against Comrade Zuma were placed in the public arena by Comrade Zuma himself. They were sustained by him and those who are around him, like the [ANC Youth League president Fikile] Mbalulas, [Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima] Vavis and [SACP general secretary Blade] Nzimandes.

“If you repeat a lie again and again, people start believing it. If the ANC is to correct that it must correct it in the public arena, where it was placed, not by us, but by Comrade Zuma.

“If Dr Skweyiya were a man of justice, he would have rebuked Comrade Zuma publicly [when he made the allegations] and not rebuked somebody who responds to a malicious allegation,” he said.

Responding to Skweyiya’s statement that his behaviour was anti- ANC, Lekota said: “I think it is contrary to ANC culture not to tell the truth. That is what is un-ANC.”

The ANC chairman said Skweyiya was not disputing the facts he had placed in the public domain.

“The ANC is never uncomfortable with the truth,” said Lekota.

With acknowledgements to Xolani Xundu and The Times.