ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has admitted that what the ANC called a fire pool in the R240 million Nkandla scandal was, in fact, a swimming pool.
Zuma has supported the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, without resigning as a member of the ANC, just a few weeks after he was elected as the KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of the ANC’s alliance partner, the SA National Civic Organisation.
In a video posted on Sunday evening, Mbalula said: ‘In defence of our president, we went to Parliament and opened an ad hoc committee and said a swimming pool is a fire pool. You see swimming pool where you swim? We changed it and said it’s a fire pool. The minister of police [Nathi Nhleko] was dripping of sweat even though he had not drunk any alcohol. It’s difficult to explain lies’.
He added that people lost their careers because of the Nkandla scandal.
In an extension of the video posted on his X account on Monday, Mbalula said the ANC had tried to ‘polish’ Zuma. Mbalula said in Xhosa: ’You can’t polish him at all’.
‘We washed him and his problems. Today, he goes around speaking about us. We will respond, but don’t rush it. Let him gallivant around. Just watch him.’
Mbalula added that leaders had corrected those who made reference to Zuma’s ‘nine wasted years”, when referring to the disastrous Zuma years.
‘You can’t say that, because if you say nine wasted years, it might be correct – we have been dealing with an individual in those nine years, from one problem to the other.’
At the ANC’s 112th anniversary celebrations ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe interrupted members singing about unity because of time constraints.
‘We know you want this unity by force’, Mantashe joked.
[Photo: Screenshot/News24 video]