The ANC’s regional treasurer Mbulelo Gidane will have to explain to the party’s Nelson Mandela Bay leadership why he revealed the organisation’s dire financial position to the media.
While Gidane was rumoured to have been under investigation following a report in Weekend Post’s sister publication The Herald that the ANC in the Bay was broke, regional secretary Themba Xathula refuted this.
He said the top regional leadership of the ANC would sit with Gidane to understand why he revealed the finances of the ANC to the media.
“The REC resolved that the officials must meet with him to hear his side of the story,” he said.
Xathula said it was not Gidane’s place to reveal internal party secrets.
“The ANC [in the metro] has only one spokesperson who is on full time and we have the regional secretary and that’s not him [Gidane],” Xathula said.
Asked about the meeting with the regional bosses, Gidane referred questions to Xathula.
Earlier this month, The Herald reported that two years after it was voted out of the metro, the ANC was so broke it could barely cater for its members – let alone pay its R200,000 municipal bill.
Gidane revealed that earlier this year the municipality had cut the power to the party’s Florence Matomela offices when it defaulted on its debt.
He also revealed that several service providers used by the previous regional executive committee and the regional task team were owed hundreds of thousands of rands, which included the Eastcape Training Centre, the venue used for the regional elective conference where former president Jacob Zuma made a brief appearance last year.
ANC regional acting chairman Phumzile Tshuni, confirmed Gidane was not under investigation, but he refused to discuss the upcoming meeting with Gidane.
“These are ANC internal matters. I can’t discuss such issues with the media,” Tshuni said.
A source close to the REC, who did not want to named, said since the article was published , the REC was unhappy with Gidane.
“He exposed his lack of knowledge of ANC processes. You don’t just reveal the organisation’s finances to just anyone. That’s why we have open and closed sessions even during conferences. It’s commonsense,” the source said.
Another insider in the regional executive committee said the ANC’s top five had been tasked to deal with the Gidane situation and report back to the regional structure.
“The PEC (provincial executive committee) of the ANC raised this issue in a meeting we had with them either last week Monday or Tuesday.
“Even during a working committee meeting, the article was raised and it was said that the region had only one secretary, who is Themba [Xathula] and provincially it is [Lulama] Ngcukayitobi and they are the ones meant to release any statements,” the source said.