ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has tried to do damage control after his “Nkandla fire pool” comments.
On Sunday, 7 December, while addressing ANC members in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, Mbalula admitted that the ANC lied in Parliament in order to support former president Jacob Zuma when he was under fire for the upgrades of the R3,9 million "fire pool" done on his Nkandla homestead in KZN.
Mbalula said: “We went to Parliament and opened an ad hoc committee and said a swimming pool is a fire pool. The police minister was sweating, seeing that this was a lie, because it is difficult to explain lies. People have lost their careers because of that thing.”
He came under fire after dropping the bombshell with the public questioning if the ANC was using the same tactics to protect President Cyril Ramaphosa on his Phala Phala farm gate saga.
Mbalula has now come forward to bring clarity on what he “meant” about the "fire pool".
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Mbalula took to X on Monday evening to clarify these comments by stating that just in case someone wants to deliberately twist what he said about the ANC's involvement in the Nkandla debacle, as the ANC they will proactively explain both what he said and what he meant in context.
He said such a move was precisely to protect the ANC president from being unfairly overrun by the spiteful opposition.
“What is important to expose here is that by affording the president due process of law, which was his right under our constitution, the ANC was protecting its president. The SG fairly reported that the matter was ventilated in the courts, as it was supposed to be, and the chips fell where the Constitutional Court said they should fall,” he said.
He further said anyone who understood or interpreted his remarks in Mpumalanga as an admission that the ANC assisted, abetted, aided or attempted to assist, abet or aid the former president in defrauding the government, must have his or her head checked.
Meanwhile, the civil rights movement #NotInMyName expressed concerns over Mbalula's admission, stating that lying under oath was an affront to the constitution, Parliament, and the public's trust in politicians.
The movement's leader, Siyabulela Jentile, questioned whether similar instances of deception had occurred in defence of other presidents, notably referring to the Phala Phala farm gate scandal.
