South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday took to pen and paper to write to fellow ruling National African Congress party members, urging them to end rampant corruption in their ranks in order to regain the people’s trust.
The letter comes in the wake of Ramaphosa’s pledge ahead of the party’s 54th national conference in 2017, which elevated to the ANC presidency, to deal with and ultimately end corruption in the organisation and the county as a whole.
However, with the coronavirus pandemic, the vice seems to have increased uncontrollably, especially in the past five months with the abuse in the awarding of tenders for the purchase of Covid-19 personal protection equipment (PPE) under his watch, he noted.
Ramaphosa said this was because some – not all – ANC members’ deliberately flouted the laid out procedures by failing to implement the party’s anti-corruption resolutions as agreed at the 2017 party conference.
He urged the ANC leadership and its members to reclaim its legacy as a party of Nelson Mandela and OR Tembo, the most revered late leaders of the movement.
“We cannot hope to win back people’s trust if we continue to allow cadres who are charged with criminal conduct for corruption to occupy positions of responsibility within government and our movement,” Ramaphosa said.
This was in apparent reference to disgraced former Durban mayor Zandile Gumede who was redeployed to the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature last week to the dismay of Ramaphosa and other observers – including retired Ombudsman Thuli Madonsela who condemned the move.
Gumede is answering fraud charges in connection with the alleged corrupt awarding of a US$12 million waste removal tender by the city under her direction.
With such misdeeds, the president said the ANC has “so far been unable to turn our organisational positions into actions that will end corruption once and for all.”
“As a result, we have allowed corruption to continue and, at times, to flourish within our ranks.”
He said that he was writing to his “beloved” ANC members, as the power to bring to an end corruption lies with them.
“It is you who chooses the leadership, who sets the policies and who implements the programmes of our organisation.
“It is you who lives in communities, who interacts daily with the front line of service delivery and who sees the damage that corruption causes,” he said.
NM/jn/APA