He had been taken away by the cops on malicious damage to property charges.
Contestant for the Mpumalanga position of ANC deputy president DD Mabuza is accusing Safety and Security MEC Pat Ngomane of using state resources to victimise him.
Mandla Msibi, who wants to be chairman of the ANC in the province, spoke to students at the Acornhoek Tvet College on Saturday afternoon and said more than 150 cops came to his house to arrest him.
He was nabbed on Monday morning a week ago.
“If you have a view about a specific person that you want to lead the ANC, pursue your view without assassinating the character of the other contender,” Msibi said to the students.
“Comrade Pat Ngomane must stop using state security apparatus to fight political battles in the ANC,” he told the applauding students who had come to fill the main hall of the college.
Msibi addressed the Nelson Mandela memorial lecture organised by PRET and supported by SASCO in the campus.
He was arrested on Monday last week on charges on malicious damage to property and released on a warning, according to provincial media.
A community meeting in the area of Pienaar had accused Msibi, the speaker of the Mbombela municipality, of corruption and Msibi allegedly went to revenge those who held the meeting by attacking them, Mpumalanga News reported, and the cops swooped.
But in Acornhoek, Msibi said he had never seen such a large number of police officers coming to arrest an individual in his life.
He claimed this was done by Ngomane to make sure he doesn’t stand for nomination as he will be facing criminal charges.
“When they came to my house to arrest me they said that I was being charged for house robbery, that I took a TV but when we were there at the police station they changed and said I was being charged for malicious damage to property. I was shocked. And when I asked they said ‘no, don’t worry, we will take you back to your house’.”
He said he phoned Ngomane and told him he was intending to sue the state for “unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution and defamation of character”.
“I put him on loud-speaker and comrade Pat just said ok,”Msibi said.
Ngomane’s spokesman Joseph Mabuza said the MEC doesn’t interfere in the daily operation of the cops.
“He didn’t even know about the case. I’m the one that called him after I had media enquiries that Mandla Msibi is arrested and asked me to check what he had been arrested for. It will be wrong to say the MEC directs the cops on who to arrest and who not to arrest,” Mabuza said.
(edited by MLM)
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