The late member of the ANC women’s league NEC, Bongi Maria Ntuli, was disciplined and had a leadership commitment that was unquestionable.
These were the words of the president of the ANCWL during Ma-Ntuli’s funeral service in Mpumalanga on Saturday.
Bathabile Dlamini said during the time she worked with Ma-Ntuli in government and in the ANC, she came to understand Ma-Ntuli as a very committed person who wanted the job to be done properly.
“A humble servant of the people and by being a humble servant of the people it means you knew who was hungry in your society,” Dlamini told mourners in Kwaggafontein on Saturday.
“It also means if your neighbour lost a somebody through death you went there and assisted. But Ma-Ntuli went before there,” said Dlamini.
“She did everything with confidence and you could see that with the way she did it that this one is confident and I remember she was very shocked when President Zuma appointed her. But ourselves we were not shocked because we knew the person that the President was appointing was confident and committed,‘’ Dlamini said.
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She said Ma-Ntuli’s belief in God made her “a forthright, fearless and gallant fighter” in the church and society “and this she used when building the structures of the ANC”.
Dlamini said Ma-Ntuli wouldn’t raise internal issues outside ANC structure because “she worked for the ANC and her commitment was always unquestionable”.
In an indirect attack to former foreign affairs director-general and Anglo-Ashanti chairman, Sipho Pityane, and ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu, Dlamini said to the hundreds of mourners who gathered in a tent outside Ma-Ntuli’s home: “Another thing that I liked about Ma-Ntuli is that she never waited for newspapers or a funeral in order to raise the things she didn’t like. She would have raised them in the structures of the ANC, not outside,” she said to a thunderous applause from mourners who were mostly members of the ANC and its alliance partners – SACP, Cosatu and Sanco.
Two months ago, Pityana used former senior leader Makhenkesi Stofile’s funeral to lament Zuma for a variety of things, ranging from Marikana to Nkandla and state capture by the Gupta family.
Two weeks ago, Mthembu used an interview with City Press to call on the NEC to resign together Zuma, saying it has failed to lead correctly.
(edited by MLM)
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