JOHANNESBURG — The ANC yesterday accused the Scorpions of being a political unit made up of apartheid security branch members that treat the party like the “enemy” and said they and the DA hate the ANC.
“We have built a political unit and we don’t need that,” said ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe after a meeting with DA leader Helen Zille on the future of the Scorpions.
“The mistake was putting a lot of special branch [apartheid security police] into the [National Prosecuting Authority] and they see their erstwhile opponents as the same enemy today,” said Mantashe. “It has become a unit that is to fight the ANC and we can’t have that.”
He said he failed to see how the DA, which he called a party of “recycled National Party diehards”, could not see the Scorpions’ actions as an abuse of power.
He found it “strange” that it could take eight years for the Scorpions to bring Jacob Zuma to court on corruption charges, yet they could make plea bargain agreements with others like British national Mark Thatcher, implicated in a plot to topple the Equatorial Guinean government.
He said Brett Kebble murder accused Glenn Agliotti has been allowed a plea bargain agreement on drug-trafficking charges “in return for collusion on the case of Jackie Selebi”, the national police commissioner and an ANC national executive committee member, who faces corruption charges. “If ANC cadres are on the wrong side of the law, arrest them, take it to a conclusion, but do the same with everyone,” he said.
He accused the DA and the Scorpions of hating the ANC.
“The only thing in common between the Scorpions and the DA is their persistent hatred for the ANC …
“For the DA there is nothing peculiar about a case that has dragged on for eight years. I think that is strange,” said Mantashe.
Zille countered that it is the opposition’s job to hold government accountable. “Of course we differ from the ANC, that is necessary in a democracy, but that we want to save the Scorpions because we hate the ANC is far-fetched indeed.”
Parliament is working on a bill to remove the Scorpions from the NPA and restructure them within the police.
In a later statement, Zille said it is ironic that Mantashe sees the Scorpions’ probe into Zuma as an abuse of power. “He cannot see that the real abuse of power is when high-ranking ANC officials allegedly use their positions to line their own pockets.”
She said the party also failed to explain how the move could strengthen the fight against crime.
Group hug 
