ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has been running a secret, parallel budget negotiating team — sparking a furious reaction from his top-seven colleagues when they found out.
President Cyril Ramaphosa called an urgent meeting of the party’s top echelon on Monday after learning that the parallel team had been negotiating with the DA.
The existence of the team set up by Mbalula came to light at a meeting of the party’s national executive committee last weekend following reports that the ANC had rejected a compromise proposal from the DA on the highly contentious budget.
The “official” negotiating team, led by ANC chief whip Mdumiseni Ntuli, complained it was being undermined.
The DA is said to have believed that Mbalula’s team represented the Presidency.
Luthuli House sources said Mbalula confessed at the meeting on Monday that he had appointed his own team.
When asked for his comment, Mbalula said: “I don't account to you and your faceless sources about ANC business. Which is distorted anyway and a lie.”
National chair Gwede Mantashe was “livid”, the sources said, and accused the parallel team of undermining the official negotiators and finance minister Enoch Godongwana.
Mbalula’s team included minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, former MP Nkenke Kekana, former Gauteng premier David Makhura and transport minister Barbara Creecy.
Another ANC leader with close ties to Mantashe accused the members of the parallel structure of going along with Mbalula’s initiative so they could gain plaudits for having “saved” the ANC during the budget impasse.
“They undermined the task team and Gwede would have said this to the leadership. Mbalula did not even care to inform his deputy, Maropene [Ramokgopa], who was part of the official task team,” this source said.
“She was not happy and Nomvula [Mokonyane] was not happy. You must remember this is not the first time Mbalula has blindsided his deputies. It’s irritating to them.”
Mbalula said there are always backdoors when there are negotiations ... Mantashe asked why the officials had not received a report of the backdoor. Mantashe was very rough.
— Source
The source said Mbalula had told the top seven meeting that he saw his team as an extension of the ANC engagements with the DA at the time the GNU was formed.
A senior ANC leader said “there was no such a team” and that the party had taken a multi-pronged approach to the talks. “This is why the DP and Mantashe went to Julius and asked him to abstain but he refused. So they were many people meeting with different leaders.”
Kekana and Makhura, along with others such as party veteran Fébé Potgieter-Gqubule, deputy minister of justice & constitutional development Andries Nel and “sometimes” Godongwana, “would be called up on the side” to meet the DA negotiators during the talks about the GNU last year, the source quoted Mbalula as having told the meeting.
“Those lines were opened at that time and they were never closed. Now that there was a budget negotiation, the SG explained that he felt that given that there was this communication path which had been opened, we could exploit it to get the DA to co-operate on the budget,” said the source.
“Mbalula said there are always backdoors when there are negotiations ... Mantashe asked why the officials had not received a report of the backdoor. Mantashe was very rough.
“The president was very diplomatic. He said [DA leader John Steenhuisen] had written to him, and the SG then informed him there are comrades who were talking to DA people,” the source said.
Mbalula is said to have defended his decision on the grounds that as secretary-general he was empowered to take actions “to save the ANC”. But Mbalula failed to appease his colleagues over why he kept the existence of his team secret.
“It created problems for everyone, but I think he meant no harm because it is true he is the SG,” the senior ANC source said.
“But he was supposed to at least tell his colleagues at the top structure so that they could compare notes” on what the two separate negotiating teams were doing.
“It just looked clumsy because it portrayed the ANC as a party that is not organised and the DA guys were saying we really confused them with all these negotiating structures.”
Several ANC leaders said Mbalula might have the right to make deployments on behalf of the party but his attempts at secrecy were a mistake.
“There’s nothing sinister, but the fact that no-one was told is wrong [and] we ought to have known,” said another insider. “He couldn’t explain why he was doing a parallel thing, but they [his top-seven colleagues] are not fighting him on it ... They just said he must collapse that team and they must go tell the DA that there is no deal that they will enter into with them.”
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