MKMVA STATEMENT REJECTING THE OUTRAGEOUS ATTEMPTED EXPULSION OF COMRADE CARL MPANGAZITHA NIEHAUS FROM THE ANC, WITH THE CONTEMPT IT DESERVES

Date: 12 December 2022

The Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Associations (MKMVA) is angered and distraught by continuing persecution of our National Spokesperson, and NEC and NWC member, comrade Carl Mpangazitha Niehaus.

We have learnt with anger and shock that comrade Carl Niehaus was today informed, via social media leaks, that the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) of the ANC had decided to expel him from the ANC on the basis of entirely trumped up charges. The manner in which comrade Niehaus had to learn about this attempted expulsion, through the decision of the NDC having been leaked on social media, is outrageous, illegal, and most disrespectful.

The charges that have been brought against comrade Niehaus has right from its inception been totally vacuous, irregular and trumped up.

The NDC was right from the beginning of these charges having been brought against comrade Niehaus, fully aware that the utterances that had been made by him, last year from the 2nd to the 8th July 2021, were the verbatim articulation the official position of the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Associations (MKMVA), as contained in official resolutions taken by the NEC of MKMVA.

In fact comrade Niehaus was instructed by the NEC of MKMVA to travel to the residence of President Jacob Zuma at Nkandla, and to convey those resolutions of the MKMVA NEC to him, and also to announce them publicly to the media. This is exactly what comrade Niehaus did.

The ANC NDC had been officially informed about this inescapable factual situation through a leNer that the late President of MKMVA, comrade Kebby Maphatsoe, had written to the then Deputy Secretary General of the ANC, comrade Jessie Duarte, and a copy of which was also made available to the NDC.

Despite the fact that the criticisms and serious concerns that comrade Niehaus articulated about the decision of the Constitutional Court (CC) to sentence President Jacob Zuma to a 15 month prison sentence, were official decisions of our MKMVA NEC, he had been relentlessly persecuted for having done his job in articulating those decisions clearly and without fail, under very difficult circumstances. The NEC of MKMVA subsequently officially commended comrade Niehaus for a job well done, and that he filled the leadership vacuum that the ANC NEC so irresponsibly allowed to develop during that fateful

time, through their glaring absence at Nkandla, and other areas of conflict and tension.

The fact of the matter is that the relentless victimisation and persecution of comrade Niehaus is indeed the persecution of the whole of MKMVA. We must make it unequivocally clear that we do not see this as the persecution of comrade Niehaus alone, but as the victimisation and persecution of the whole of MKMVA.

This deliberate act of factional targeting, and persecution, is indeed only the continuation of the factional targeting and persecution that MKMVA, and all our members, have been subjected to in the most insidious manner by the NEC of the ANC, under the factional and triumphalist leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa. This culminated even in a illegal attempt to disband MKMVA, despite the fact the ANC NEC knew perfectly well that they were acting totally illegally, in pursuing that disastrous course of action.

It must further be noted that the dragged out charges, and many aborted sittings of the NDC while pursuing comrade Niehaus, dragged on for more than a year. This in itself is in contravention of the ANC Constitution that stipulates that disciplinary procedures must be concluded expeditiously, and must lapse in the event of such proceedings taking longer than six months. Thus, the trumped up charges continued to be levelled against comrade Niehaus in an illegal, unconstitutional, and most malicious manner.

MKMVA also cannot fail to point out that comrade Niehaus had said nothing different in the official MKMVA expression of our criticism of the Constitutional Court sentence against President Zuma, and our concern that the judiciary display serious signs of being captured, than what other senior members of the ANC have said, among those are comrades Gwede Mantashe and Lindiwe Sisulu. They have not been charged, but comrade Niehaus is in the most malicious manner selectively targeted and relentlessly persecuted.

The vindictive decision by the ANC NDC to try and expel comrade Niehaus from the ANC, is a fundamental and gross injustice, that must be challenged forthwith.