By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Naledi Pandor has weighed in on the party’s contentious “step aside” resolution, saying President Cyril Ramaphosa remains resolute to fight corruption in the party.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Pandor admitted the ANC faced challenges with implementing the resolution and said the party had to address the “absence of ethics and integrity” in its ranks.
“It has been a tough challenge but Ramaphosa is very resolute in his intention to address the malfeasance that had been prevalent in our country and to ensure we restore public credibility and address criminal actions by a number of people,” Pandor said.
She was speaking in London where she is attending the G7 meeting summit in her capacity as South African minister of international relations and cooperation.
The ANC has been grappling to implement its 2017 Nasrec conference resolution on the temporary removal of members who are charged with corruption and other serious crimes in a bid to clean up its public image.
In the wake of ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule’s suspension ANC NEC member, Pandor is calling for “all those who are corrupt to go to jail”, with opposition parties warning that the party was facing a massive corruption crisis amid concerns of long drawn out court battles by all those implicated.
However Magashule was,insisting that he remained in office because he’d appealed the party’s decision to suspend him.
In a bizarre move, he claimed that he’d suspended Ramaphosa even though he had no such authority to do so.
Ramaphosa, has told the party’s parliamentary caucus that he received Magashule’s letter attempting to suspend him with shock and a measure of dismay
Ramaphosa, who addressed the party’s caucus on Thursday morning, said that he received the letter of suspension from Magashule on Wednesday night.
Pandor said it was very important for the ANC-led government to “clean up the public sector”.
“A number of people have been charged and of course we have an independent judiciary and we’ll accept the outcome of the trials. It’s our hope that all those who are corrupt will end up in prison.
“There is also corruption in the private sector and we’ve got to address this absence of ethics and integrity, and ensure that our security and law enforcement agencies are able to catch these criminals,” she said.
Pandor is pushing for “relaxation of intellectual property rights” for more equitable vaccine distribution. “The world must make good on the undertaking everybody was giving… that vaccines will be a public good. We can’t retreat from that.”