Mahumapelo: DA's bid to oust Mkhwebane and divide ANC will fail

The ANC will never vote with the DA to remove Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, even though it has not formalised a position on the allegations against her, said ANC MP and former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo.

"We need to put it on record that the Democratic Alliance['s] political antics of wanting to divide the African National Congress is not going to work.

"It's bound to fail. It's going to collapse," he said on the sidelines of the Cape Town Magistrate's Court. He was part of a delegation supporting fellow MP and former state security minister Bongani Bongo in a separate corruption case.

The delegation to support Bongo included former minerals minister and ANC MP Mosebenzi Zwane and MPs Tshilidzi Munyai and Lawrence McDonald.

Mahumapelo said: "Because there is no way that the African National Congress here in Parliament are going to support the motion of the opposition in the form of the DA to remove the Public Protector. It's not going to happen."

Mahumapelo said the ANC would discuss the allegations against Mkhwebane internally and they do not have an official position yet.

"At the right time, when the debates take place in the ANC around the reasons, we will discuss [it] within the African National Congress.

"But the DA must know that it is not going to use this matter to divide the African National Congress. We are resolute."

He said National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise is executing her responsibilities in terms of the rules of Parliament by allowing the DA's motion to start a process which the party hopes will remove Mkhwebane.

"We are on the field of politics. And the DA is not going to succeed in the field of politics. Because that's where we are going to meet. By the time we go to Parliament, the antics of wanting to divide the ANC and remove the Public Protector will have collapsed completely."

He said the DA also knows it does not have the majority in Parliament needed to remove the Public Protector.

"So, why start something that you know it has failed before you even started? So they are not going to get that majority. We are a majority party in the ANC, in Parliament as the African National Congress.

'We will never support a motion in the name of the opposition'

"And as the ANC I want to repeat, we will never support a motion in the name of the opposition by the Democratic Alliance. It's impossible."

DA chief whip Natasha Mazzone requested the parliamentary process relating to Mkhwebane's possible removal.

Mahumapelo claimed the ANC had never voted with "counter-revolutionaries" in its long history.

In 2017 however, when a motion of no confidence was voted on regarding former president Jacob Zuma in August that year, the final tally showed that not all ANC MPs followed the party line.

Bongo's case, meanwhile, was postponed to February 21 for his case to be transferred to the high court.

He is alleged to have tried to delay a 2017 Eskom inquiry by allegedly attempting to bribe the inquiry's evidence leader to call in sick.