Cape Town - ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa on Saturday accused Edward Zuma of “extreme ill discipline” and “un-ANC” behaviour for publishing an open letter attacking ANC leaders Derek Hanekom and Pravin Gordhan.
Edward Zuma, who is President Jacob Zuma’s son, published the open letter earlier this week.
He referred to Hanekom as a “white monopoly capitalist offspring - who is no better than a vile dog trained to maul a black skin” and a “white Afrikaner, anti majoritarian sellout”.
Zuma referred to former finance minister Gordhan as another sellout who wants “natives to be perennially marginalised”.
Kodwa said that Zuma was a branch member of the ANC, and not in a leadership position.
“A branch member does not talk to leaders of the ANC via an open letter,” said Kodwa. “We have instructed our KwaZulu-Natal structure to deal with the matter urgently, because it constitutes ill discipline.”
“We have seen consistently that he [Edward Zuma] has assumed a position of spokesperson, to speak and attack leaders of the ANC with impunity. We think that must come to an end.”
Race card
Kodwa said it was “even worse” that Zuma was using the “race card to attack ANC leaders”.
On Friday the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) said the contents of the letter included statements that promote hatred on the basis of race.
“[The letter is] offensive and disturbing, and a clear violation of the right to freedom of expression as articulated in section 16 of the Constitution,” it said in a statement.
Kodwa said the commission must continue to do its work, adding, "but we have a responsibility as a political organisation to reign in our members when they are out of order”.
On Saturday morning, in a new open letter, Zuma referred to the commission in the same way he had referred to Hanekom; as a “vile dog”.
Zuma wrote the SAHRC was keeping South Africans in check with the “whip of censure”.
He ended his new letter: “Institutions like the SAHRC still possess a residue of the exclusionary minority mindset in terms of the cases and issues they target. Could it be, that such minority minded institutions and the SAHRC may just lead us into another race war?”
