The web Fikile Mbalula weaves

For anyone still needing convincing, the past fortnight provides ample evidence that Fikile Mbalula’s ambitions far outstrip his competence.

The ANC secretary-general has been stumbling toward the upcoming municipal elections like a drunkard in a minefield.

First, he failed to register scores of ANC candidates by the official deadline. Then the Electoral Court dismissed his “technical glitch” argument for their reinstatement.

A default judgment for close on R1 million has just been awarded against the ANC over non-payment of cleaning contracts to Luthuli House.

And now, he is locked in a defamation lawsuit against former ally Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Badly timed lawsuit

This is spectacularly ill-timed. It re-acquaints the electorate with the party’s sordid history of money-for-votes practices while inviting intense, unwelcome scrutiny of his own allegedly criminal conduct, as well as that of President Cyril Ramaphosa, the man whose camp he joined after ditching Dlamini-Zuma.

The case, in which judgment has been reserved, concerns claims by Dlamini-Zuma that Mbalula had been dishing out money to delegates at the ANC’s 2022 leadership conference to secure votes for himself as secretary-general and for Ramaphosa’s re-election as ANC president.

Mbalula flatly denies it. He has demanded a retraction and an apology.

Dlamini-Zuma has filed an affidavit from a delegate who claims not only to have seen Mbalula doling out bundles of cash, but also to have been one of the “bought” delegates.

That makes it likely the dispute eventually will have to be tested through oral evidence or a full trial.

ANC’s history of vote buying

And what a can of squirming ANC worms that might open. Nobody at the top of the organisation denies vote-buying in the ANC exists.

And the one who revealed the rot most dramatically to the world was Mbalula himself.

Four days before the December 2017 conference, Mbalula – then police minister and a fiery supporter of Dlamini-Zuma against Ramaphosa – took to Twitter to announce police had intercepted R2.5 million in notes, allegedly destined to buy delegates’ votes.

He declared the “money launderous” (sic) would be “crushed decisively”.

Once Ramaphosa had been elected, Mbalula seamlessly switched sides to Ramaphosa, and no more was heard about crushing the vote-buyers.

Mantashe’s damaging remarks

But it is that renowned blunderer, ANC national chair and Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe who has done the most damage.

Asked about allegations concerning the huge sums spent getting Ramaphosa elected, Mantashe was disarmingly frank with eNCA: “I am not sure, I think [Ramaphosa] scaled down this year,” Mantashe said.

Mantashe continued that Ramaphosa had “been in trouble” over the previous campaign but that in 2022, the use of money had become “widespread”.

A candidate for ANC treasurer-general who worked “in the Office of the President” was “going around buying votes”, he said.

Mantashe never publicly named the person, but Bejani Chauke, a Ramaphosa advisor, was among the unsuccessful candidates for ANC treasurer-general.

Chauke now serves as Ramaphosa’s special envoy for strategic relations and investment. Dlamini-Zuma’s strongest legal defence is that her allegations are true.

Exposed ANC thread

With his defamation action, Mbalula is tugging at an exposed and dangerously frayed ANC thread.

It is one that stitches together Mbalula’s presidential ambitions, Ramaphosa’s hopes of shaping the presidential succession, and what remains of the ANC’s reputation.

Perhaps that is exactly what Dlamini-Zuma intended when she made her explosive claim in the run-up to such an important election.