Fransman assistant to sue over ANC membership 'insult'

8 September 2016

Cape Town - An assistant to Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman has vowed to go ahead with threatened legal action after the party's provincial secretary, Faiez Jacobs, failed to apologise to her as demanded.

Vanessa Le Roux said she sent a lawyer's letter to Jacobs last week demanding an apology from him for saying she was not an ANC member.

Le Roux considered his remarks, made at a weekend party meeting, as a slight on her character and felt they suggested she had "disreputable moral values" and was "a fraud".

She said she would give Jacobs until September 7 to publish an apology and to retract the comment.

On Thursday, she said via a WhatsApp message that no apology had been forthcoming, so her lawyers would let him know that she was going ahead with her planned court action.

Comment was not immediately available from Jacobs, but Western Cape ANC spokesperson Yonela Diko said he was not aware of the development.

Marginalised, victimised

Le Roux has been working for Fransman in an ANC constituency office for a year.

In last week's lawyer's letter, she said that she had been marginalised and victimised at work as a result of the comments and had been booked off sick for a stress-related illness.

She insisted she was a member of the ANC branch in Ward 17.

The accusation against Jacobs came towards the end of an email war between Fransman, Jacobs, the ANC's spokesperson for its provincial executive committee, and a caretaker sent from ANC headquarters, Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba.

Fransman has stepped aside as chairperson while he waits for the sexual harassment case lodged against him by a newly recruited PA to be resolved.

This article first appeared on News24, see here.