Former Water Affairs Minister and long serving ANC NEC member Nomvula Mokonyane has accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of trying to smear her ahead of the party’s national conference underway in Nasrec at which she’s contesting to become the party’s first deputy secretary-general.
Mokonyane was reacting to Ramaphosa’s claim that R3 billion had vanished from a water project in Giyani which was initiated in 2014 when she was minister.
Mokonyane spoke to Newsnote on the sidelines of the conference and said she felt targeted by the president.
“I don’t know what led the President in the middle of his campaign to go to Giyani, I don’t know and I also don’t understand how they arrived at that kind of money.
“I have long moved out of government and I’m one of those people who worked tirelessly with the SIU around that project so in everything you do timing is of essence, it’s all about the timing, why now”?asked Mokonyane implying that Ramaphosa was trying to reduce her chances of being elected at the conference.
Mokonyane is contesting to be the party’s first deputy secretary-general.
Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya hit back at her suggesting Mokonyane could be implicated in corruption related to the 9-year old project which was at times abandoned and has had budgets expanded over the years even beyond her term of office.
“That comment the president made is not a calculated attack on anybody, it’s the president as he should be calling out what he finds to be evidence of maleficence, corruption and maladministration.
“If anybody feels that they’ve been attacked whilst they were party to or involved in that portfolio then they must come out and talk about what they did to avoid those losses to the fiscus and to prevent the kind of delay we saw in that project”, said Magwenya.
Problems of budget overruns and delays are well-documented and it’s not clear why the president presented his claim of a missing R3 billion so close to the conference but Magwenya said Ramaphosa did not need to explain himself before embarking on an oversight nor was he subjected to time limits.
“The president went for an oversight visit about a week or two ago.
The president has no time limitations as to when he can attend to oversight visits. There’s no time limitation for the president to attend to problematic areas of service delivery.
“There’s been a problem in Giyani for the longest of time just as we’ve had issues for the longest of time in other areas of governance so nobody can prescribe to the President as to when he must attend to issues”, he said.
Mokonyane will face off with former Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat Peterson who was nominated after several other people declined to stand.