JOHANNESBURG – The South African Communist Party (SACP) is calling on President Jacob Zuma to terminate his relationship with the Guptas.
The SACP’s Deputy General Secretary, Solly Mapaila, said the movement welcomed the African National Congress’s NEC statement, following its meeting this past weekend.
The statement relayed outcomes of the meeting, including the economy and upcoming local elections.
Mapaila was addressing the South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union Bargaining Conference in Cape Town on Monday.
Mapaila also applauded Deputy Minister of Finance, Mcebisi Jonas, for speaking out against members of the Gupta family who allegedly offered him a cabinet post.
“The NEC statement could have gone deeper, none the less we welcome the statement. And we want to have a situation where all the time when our movement meets, we always look forward to its statement because we are confident that the leadership of our country had met. It should not be that when they have met we doubt what’s going to come out because we think whose ideas are they going to portray in public now, is it the ideas of the Guptas or the Ruperts,” Mapaila said.
Mapaila went on to congratulate the NEC for calling out ANN7 and The New Age – media interests owned by the Guptas.
“We congratulate the movement for taking up this matter and for engaging with it and to deal with the lies perpetuated by the ANN7 grouping, who portrayed us as anti-president. They are part of the faction themselves they are generating factions in the African National Conference they siding with one faction,” he said.
Mapaila said the Sactwu has never called for the recall of President Jacob Zuma.
Instead, it has urged the president to cut ties with the Gupta family and launch a commission of inquiry into the so-called corporate capture of the government.
“If the President feels he cannot commission the judicial commission of inquiry into corporate capture, which does not necessarily speak to the Guptas but to the Guptas and all other, that if he doesn’t’t do that that the next president will do that and there will always be consequences,” Mapaila said.