Zuma laughed when the ANC lost metros in the elections – Makhosi Khoza
30 November 2017
Durban – When the ANC lost metros during the August 2016 local government elections, President Jacob Zuma "didn't see anything wrong", Dr Makhosi Khoza revealed on Wednesday evening.
"Instead, he laughed and asked concerned ANC members why they were sad," said Khoza.
Khoza was speaking in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, for the first time since she resigned from the ANC.
The former MP said some ANC leaders, including her, were dismayed when the ANC lost its majority in Tshwane, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and Ekurhuleni.
She said she believed that the ANC would not have retained Ekurhuleni if it did not go into coalition with the African Independent Congress, therefore she considered the metro as one of the four that the ANC lost during the elections.
"You lose four metros out of eight in one election and you think things are normal?" she asked.
Khoza said Zuma walked up to ANC officials who were looking sad during the elections and asked them why they were feeling that way.
"We were looking sad and our leader came and asked why we were sad. I asked myself, 'where am I?' He just didn't see anything wrong or he pretended he didn't see anything wrong. Of course, his signature is to giggle. And he laughed at us, we were all dismayed. You lose Johannesburg and it doesn't say anything to you?" asked Khoza.
She vowed that there was no way that the ANC could self-correct.
"I mean when you have leaders who stand up and disassociate themselves from a decision that the president took of firing [former] finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas," she said.
"You don't have the director general, minister and deputy minister, the whole Treasury and what results do you expect?"
Khoza spoke highly of late president Nelson Mandela during the gala dinner, organised by the Xubera Institute for Research and Development.
She said that under Mandela's tenure as the country's president, the economy did well.
"South Africa also won the Rugby World Cup in 1995 and in 1996 Bafana Bafana won the African Nations Cup.
"We gave the world Madiba and the world cheered us up, we then decided... 'no, world you're wrong', we then gave them Zuma," she said.
Khoza also took a swipe at the current Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
"We gave the world Thuli Madonsela [the former Public Protector] and when everybody was cheering us, you know who we gave them?" she asked before bursting into laughter.
ANC betrayed its mission
She said that on April 7 this year, South Africans came together with a genuine concern, and marched across the country, asking the ANC to remove only one person.
"They said 'we don’t want to disrupt your [the ANC's] term of office since we gave you the mandate to be in power for five years - all we want is for you to remove this extremely, extremely morally handicapped head of state'. Now what the ANC does is to decide to ignore all of you," she said.
Khoza said the ANC has betrayed its mission of uniting the country.
"It has betrayed the mission of addressing the plight of the poor and has failed to realise that education is a reliable weapon of getting you out of poverty.
"We need to defeat corruption because it is the enemy of development and a friend of poverty. Let's call on our leaders to act against violence that we are seeing in KZN on a daily basis," Khoza said referring to political killings in the province.
On forming a new political party, Khoza said she was approached by former members of the ANC, political parties and civic organisations. She said she obliged to lead the party because South Africa needed change.
