Prince can't be reckless on behalf of ANC – Mantashe

Pretoria – Beaufort West mayor Truman Prince cannot be "reckless" on behalf of the ANC, party secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, said on Wednesday.

"The ANC has no tender in Beaufort West and the ANC has not sent a message to all its mayors to say give tenders to [those] who will fund the ANC. There is no such thing," he told reporters in Pretoria.

Mantashe referred questions to Prince. "It would be best to talk to Truman Prince because what they do, they must take responsibility for. He must give you answers. He can't be reckless on behalf of the ANC."

But Mantashe said the African National Congress would follow up on the issue.

Prince has been unapologetic about requesting that a tender be given to a construction company "sympathetic and having a relationship with the ANC".

This was after the Democratic Alliance accused Prince of blatant corruption for writing a letter to the board chairperson of the Construction Education Training Authority (CETA) asking that he meet with a certain contractor.

Financial injection

"We are an ANC-led municipality, we are therefore in need of financial injection for our 2016 local government election campaign and therefore will also want to see construction companies sympathetic and having a relationship with the ANC to benefit, in order for these companies to inject funds in our election campaign process," he wrote in the letter.

Prince said he wrote the letter because he believed economic transformation in the central Karoo needed to be accelerated and he wanted to make sure the poorest of the poor got an opportunity to go into business.

Mantashe was addressing media on Wednesday evening following an ANC national executive committee lekgotla held in Pretoria this week.

He said at the meeting there was a debate about how people "vindictively flushed" out small businesses.

There were some who defended particular interests and therefore squeezed out other businesses or others who were in close proximity to the ANC and identified businesses that should succeed, cutting others out.

"The ANC is a leader of society; it must actually encourage the growth of small businesses, SMEs and co-operatives in society," he said. "That exercise cannot be linked to the fundraising of the ANC because it will be dangerous," he said.

This article first appeared on News24 – see here.