The ANC provincial leader says the matter is before court.
Mpumalanga ANC chairman David Mabuza is not going to comment after ex-Premier Mathews Phosa lambasted him, saying all that he was saying was sheer nonsense and calling him a “baby he recruited into the ANC”.
Phosa held a 10 minute-long interview with eNCA this week and told the newsreader that the Premier was talking nonsense in saying that Phosa was the one who was discrediting him following an alleged intelligence report that claimed Mabuza was a spy during Apartheid.
Mabuza’s spokesman Zibonele Mncwango on Wednesday night said he saw the interview the ex-Premier held but cannot comment because the matter is before court.
“The matter is before court,” Mncwango said.
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Phosa on Tuesday morning (3 May) told the eNCA newsreader that he was positive the Tshwane high court judge will dismiss the case.
“Mabuza is talking nonsense and I said it publicly several times – I don’t want to run him down. I recruited him when he was a baby, so for me he’s just a baby talking nonsense,” Phosa said.
When the eNCA newsreader asked him whether he was contesting the same Mpumalanga ground as Mabuza, Phosa replied: “No, if I’m going to contest I’d contest South Africa. Mpumalanga is a little corner there.”
He continued: “This young man I brought him up, he is not my enemy and he is not gonna be my enemy because he’s telling lies. We’re in court now, we shouldn’t go deep into that matter, it’s subjudice. And let’s wait for the judge to pronounce and I’m so confident the judge will dismiss his case,” a confident looking Phosa told the newsreader.
Phosa has been nominated to succeed President Jacob Zuma by the ANC in Western Cape.
Mabuza, one of the three leaders of the so-called Premier League – an ANC lobby group that wants ex-AU chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the next ANC President in December this year and him as her deputy – is at the Tshwane high court, demanding that Phosa pay him R10 million for defamation of character after the intelligence report that alleges that Mabuza was an apartheid spy.
Mabuza in court papers says Phosa and his business partner, Nick Elliot, cooked up the report in order to overthrow him as both provincial ANC leader and premier.
The report says Mabuza was a sellout.
The report alleges that he was a spy, code-named PN485, and that he informed apartheid government officials about the political activities of senior ANC leaders between 1985 and 1993 and worked closely with Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock.
(edited by MLM)
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