ANC presidential hopeful Zweli Mkhize reckons President Cyril Ramaphosa can learn a thing or two from him.
The former minister of health told the Sunday Times this week that Ramaphosa should be allowed to make his own decision whether to resign or stay on as president.
Mkhize said when the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) issued an adverse finding against him in relation to the Digital Vibes scandal, he resigned of his own accord. Media reports at the time suggested Mkhize had been pushed to tender his resignation.
There are growing calls for Ramaphosa to resign after an independent panel found that he has a case to answer over a burglary at his Phala Phala game farm in Limpopo.
Mkhize said leaders would always have allegations of some kind made against them, and it was up to them to decide how to respond.
“When I had to deal with the investigation that related to me, nobody forced me to resign. I felt that to deal with these issues I needed to get out of the executive and I was upfront with the president that that is what I was going to do. That process was to allow me to be able to get these matters to be ventilated in court and that is what has happened,” Mkhize said.
Asked for his view on calls for Ramaphosa to step down, he said: “It is a personal decision. It has to be left to the president to decide on that. In my case no one put pressure on me and in this case that is the kind of moral responsibility that we as leaders must hold. It is impossible to stay in a position of leadership without allegations being thrown at you as a leader.
“What is important is that if there are allegations you must take responsibility and investigate if it is in your purview. If it involves you, you must be able to take yourself through investigation processes and in my case I have gone through that and therefore my attitude would be all of us as leaders we must allow the processes to be able to disprove that there is this case,” he said.
“That is why we must say if you suspect there is something wrong, you take it for review. That is what the president has done and it is a decision taken by an individual who knows the facts and looks at the report and makes a judgment on it.”
Mkhize’s own scandal has not vanished, but he will run for Ramaphosa’s position as ANC president next week. According to the SIU, members of Mkhize’s family benefited from a R150m communications contract awarded to Digital Vibes — a company owned by Mkhize’s associates Tahera Mather and Naadhira Mitha.
The SIU traced millions of rands that flowed from the communications tender to Digital Vibes — later paid to other entities before being paid to Mkhize’s wife May Mkhize and his son Dedani.
Mkhize distanced himself from all wrongdoing this week, saying his family was never directly involved in the tender.
Asked why South Africans should trust him as president given the allegations against him, Mkhize said he had learnt valuable lessons from the Digital Vibes scandal.
“Out of this whole process there has not been any wrongdoing on my side. I have learnt lessons to make sure that going forward we avoid perception that there is direct benefit. In this case, my family was not involved in the question of the contract with the department or subcontract to Digital Vibes.
“Nevertheless I have understood the uproar and why people were unhappy. That for me is the lesson we need to take going forward. I have been subjected to investigations for two years now in relation to this matter and those processes must be allowed to take their course.”
He said that in the case of some of the money having found its way into his son’s bank account, he had conducted a “sale of animals”. “It had nothing to do with departmental contracts”.
The SIU found Dedani’s company, Tusokuhle Farming, received R1.2m from a company that had received the Digital Vibes spoils.
Mkhize has taken the SIU report on judicial review. He complained bitterly about the unit’s investigation, saying it conducted the probe with a predetermined outcome. Some millions were also traced to company owned by his wife.
Mkhize will take on Ramaphosa for the position of president when the ANC elects new leaders this week. They are the only two candidates who made it to the ballot after the party’s nomination process. Mkhize received 916 nominations to Ramaphosa’s 2,037.
Mkhize was optimistic about his chances of causing an upset.
“The prospects are good,” he said, when asked about his chances of leaving Nasrec as ANC president.
“This is based on the fact that for me to stand I was approached by a province that asked me to stand and I agreed. That province has gone on to engage other provinces and regions and they have come back indicating that there is a huge interest in my candidacy and a huge amount of support.
“What is quite strong is the desire for change. The situation we are in as the ANC and the country is motivating people to believe there is a need for change.”
He said he was the perfect candidate for the position given his past experience as an MEC and then premier of KwaZulu-Natal, and as ANC treasurer-general between 2012 and 2017.
“The ANC needs to be managed better. And in this case, having served in a province and among the ANC national officials, unity has been my thing. We need to make sure that we dismantle these groupings so that you do not get an NEC meeting that is preceded by caucuses.
“You need an ANC that is united and can be able to equally discipline members when there has been misbehaviour . It becomes difficult when you have a factionalised leadership that operates as a cabal and protects its own. The other issue is working on the administration of the ANC. Over the period as TG the focus had been for me to raise funds and one would have raised over R3bn to make the ANC programmes viable and ensuring the staff and machinery of the ANC are well maintained.
“These issues mean you need to deploy some of that experience to tighten up the machinery of the ANC. I have also had this history of being able to bring leaders down to the community. Leaders must not be free-floating, they must on a daily basis be seized with addressing challenges of communities. This mean that the way we run meetings, the way we deal with issues, you need active leadership and that is what I would bring. That allows the ANC to be effective in implementation and that is a skill and style of leadership. In my case, a very consultative style but very decisive and sensitive to tensions and ensuring that the direction of the ANC is not lost..”
Mkhize said he has a plan to revive the country’s economy, starting with fixing the power utility Eskom.
“The duty to fix Eskom requires technical expertise. A lot of it we can find in South Africa, where we cannot we should be able to go outside and get support from some of the friendly countries and that for me is where we are going to start. We need to rebuild a number of coal generators.
“We need to ensure that the old ones are refurbished and make sure there is a proper maintenance programme. We need to recognise that primarily energy generation in South Africa is coal-generated energy. At that level we need to accept that coal is here for many years because we have billions of tonnes of coal. There must be understanding that we have that and we will need it for many years to come rather than shutting down the generators and exporting the coal.
“We must however take into account available technology for reducing emissions. The level of emissions in South Africa is not as bad as the rest of the world. We need an integrated energy resource plan. It must be balanced in the context of how we want to increase the basic generation of energy so that we can use it as a platform to increase industrialisation in the country, to increase economic growth and create new manufacturing capacity for the country to do value-addition.
“We need to get past this point of load-shedding, get to a point where there is stable energy supply. We need to deal with the issue of Eskom debt. In addition, you still have a huge place for a parastatal that generates electricity,” he said
Mkhize said he thinks the board should have taken action against the Eskom executive long ago.
“I think there should have been timelines set about making a difference at Eskom, so that at some point you can be able to show that the leadership is not being successful. At this point there should have been consideration of change of leadership at Eskom. When you are dealing with a crisis, you should have some landmarks that say we must take this solution up to here,” he said.
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