JOHANNESBURG – African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, has defended his comments in which he said the party lied to the country during the Nkandla scandal in order to protect Jacob Zuma.
On Sunday, Mbalula spoke at an ANC rally in Mpumalanga where he said the party lied to Parliament and called a pool a fire pool in defence of Zuma.
Mbalula’s admission caused a storm, with the party’s national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, warning him to be careful of his words in public.
In an interview with 702’s John Perlman, Mbalula said that his comments were no different to sentiments that were shared by former ANC leaders in the past.
“There is no conflation, it is nothing new, it’s a well-stated fact and all that I was doing, I was giving historical facts about the evolution of the matter that is well-recorded, well-documented in the republic that, among others, it involves the ad-hoc committee which went to Nkandla.”