ANC Hits Back at AfriForum Over Mbalula Prosecution: ‘Ja Baas Country Is Gone’
By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief
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Johannesburg — The ANC has launched a scathing attack on AfriForum, calling it a racist organisation and questioning how the lobby group announced the prosecution of its Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula before the party or Mbalula himself were formally informed.
Mbalula faces a charge of crimen injuria over remarks he made in April last year about former Bergview College principal Jaco Pieterse, following allegations that a seven-year-old girl had been raped at the Matatiele school in the Eastern Cape in 2024.
The NPA declined to prosecute anyone over the alleged rape in May 2025, stating that medical practitioners and forensic social workers who examined and interviewed the child found no evidence of rape or sexual assault.
AfriForum’s private prosecution unit, headed by Advocate Gerrie Nel, announced on Monday that Gauteng Director of Public Prosecutions Andrew Chauke had agreed to prosecute Mbalula after representations made on August 13. The NPA’s Kaizer Kganyago confirmed the decision last week.
The ANC says neither it nor Mbalula had been notified by police or the NPA, and described it as "peculiar, irregular and potentially corrupt" that AfriForum was the first to convey the decision.
"It is peculiar, irregular and potentially corrupt that a special interest political outfit, AfriForum, is the first conveyor of a decision by an institution of State charged with independently managing aspects of our criminal justice system," said ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu.
Bhengu said AfriForum’s fixation on Mbalula bordered on harassment.
"The blinding obsession with Mbalula that this special interest political formation has long held is bordering on harassment and targeted political activity through the abuse of State institutions.
"AfriForum longs for a country where black people are expected to bow their heads and answer 'ja baas'. That country is gone, and the ANC will never allow it to return."
"Ja baas" — Afrikaans for "yes, boss/master" — was historically used to demand subservience from Black South Africans under white rule and apartheid.
The ANC argued Mbalula was delivering the party’s official NEC statement on gender-based violence and femicide at the time, which named no suspect, and that if anyone should answer, it is the ANC itself.
The party said the statement came after the police minister and SAPS had publicly identified a suspect, and it acknowledged the correction when the minister later admitted the identification was wrong.
The ANC also noted that independent prosecutors had previously declined to prosecute Mbalula, and the matter was only revived after AfriForum’s representations.
AfriForum argues Pieterse was never a suspect and that Mbalula called him an animal and accused the lobby group of defending him. The unit said Mbalula's words could reasonably be understood to refer to Pieterse even though he did not name him.
Pieterse, backed by the unit, also laid complaints against EFF leader Julius Malema and Eastern Cape Education MEC Fundile Gade. The NPA decided in August to prosecute Malema on the same charge.
The ANC said Mbalula will deal with the matter through the courts.
It is not the first time AfriForum has pursued Mbalula. The group has for years called for his prosecution over his family’s R680,000 Dubai holiday in 2016 when he was sports minister — a matter the NPA declined to prosecute in 2023.
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