Former ANC secretary general Cheryl Carolus says that adding up President Jacob Zuma’s legal costs over the past decade, would exceed a billion rand.
Carolus said the president is dividing the ANC more than he is uniting it, and that he should do the right thing by stepping down – adding to the voices of former ANC stalwarts who have called for the same.
Carolus was the ANC deputy secretary general between 1994 and 1997, and served as the acting secretary general of the party between 1997 and 1998.
Carolus said that Zuma is ‘capable of good judgement’ and has exhibited such in the past. However, she said that he needs to take a ‘step back, and see what he is putting (the ANC) through’.
“He’s asking branches to look at his misdemeanors, and make decisions on his behalf. The biggest problem…is he is abdicating responsibility for his own personal wrongs, and making it a national crisis.”
She said that Zuma is prepared to divide the ANC on something that he has acknowledged he was wrong about. She also believes the president has not apologized sufficiently for the matters he faces.
Carolus said that adding up all the costs of the legal matters Zuma has faced since pre-Polokwane (when he was elected), it amounts to hundreds of millions of rands of taxpayers’ money.
“I’m telling you, it’s over a billion rand, in legal costs” Carolus said.
“All from one person – who should be the most exemplary citizen of this country – who has taken this country into the most divisive period of politics that the country or the ANC has ever seen or imagined.”
“That one individual can divide us – not around policies, not around values, but with misdemeanors that have to do with his own enrichment or benefit – I resent that,” Carolus said.
“That’s why I asked for him to step aside, and I stand by that. He must allow the ANC to re-find its real purpose and stop wasting all our time and taxpayers money defending him and his misdemeanors.”
