Mbalula's Deadly Silence: ANC Secretary General's Refusal to Release Damning Limpopo Report Sparks Fury Over Power Play and Party Decay

ANC Secreatry FikileMbalula

By Mpho Dube-Editor in Chief

In a jarring exposé of internal decay threatening to unravel the very fabric of South Africa's African National Congress (ANC), Secretary General Fikile Mbalula stands accused of orchestrating a deliberate and indefensible veil of secrecy around a damning Investigation Report into catastrophic irregularities plaguing the Peter Mokaba, Vhembe, and Mopani Regions in Limpopo.

Reliable sources deep within the party confirm that despite the National Task Team concluding its meticulous probe and presenting its incendiary findings to the ANC's top 7 leadership a staggering three months ago – a full two weeks beyond the initially touted release deadline – Mbalula remains obstinately mute, ensconced in a fortress of opacity that fuels rampant speculation about his true motives and the abyssal depths of his ambition.

The withheld Investigation Report, regarded by insiders as a critical barometer of the party's hemorrhaging internal health, lays bare stark disparities in governance across the scrutinized Limpopo regions.

According to sources privy to its explosive contents, the ANC Peter Mokaba Region stands condemned for egregious breaches warranting nothing short of total dissolution: the leadership catastrophically failed to meet the constitutionally sacrosanct 70% threshold; disqualified branches were shockingly permitted to participate in a conference rendered bogus by their inclusion; bogus delegates were brazenly registered in a wholesale travesty of democratic process; and the Regional Task Team (RTT) cavalierly disregarded the National Dispute Resolution Committee (NDRC) report, betraying a shadowy agenda fueling perceptions of factional manipulation run amok.

In jolting contrast, the Task Team recommended Vhembe and Norman Mashabane regions be given a green light, finding irregularities therein not nearly as pervasive or toxic as the putrid malaise infecting Peter Mokaba – a glaring disparity heightening intrigue around Mbalula's motives for his stonewalling, seen by many as a grotesque exercise in shielding factional fiefdoms and nurturing personal ambition at the expense of the ANC's crumbling integrity.

Critics – and a chorus of perturbed ANC insiders – are left scratching their heads in bewilderment over Mbalula's recalcitrance, interpreting his grip on the report as symptomatic of a deeper, festering malaise: an ego-driven pursuit of power potentially aimed at catapulting himself into the presidential succession queue behind Cyril Ramaphosa, deploying tactics myopic, corrosive to ANC ethos, and inimical to party unity and transparency. "He is destroying the ANC to feed his crooked ambitions," alleges a senior party source, decrying Mbalula's maneuvers as wrong tactics born of un-ANC tendencies eating away at the party's soul.

The Task Team Report's conspicuous absence from the National Working Committee (NWC) agenda only amplifies unease, raising pointed questions about Mbalula's stewardship and whether vested interests now palpably trump institutional integrity within the ANC's upper echelons. Stan Mathabatha's selective rationale for stepping aside contrasts jarringly with perceptions of pervasive rot traceable to Mbalula's maneuvers, according to disaffected observers decrying leadership opacity as a cancer detrimental to the ANC's very fibre.

As Limpopo ANC dynamics intertwine ominously with the party's national travails – an ANC once dominant but now grappling with diminished clout post-40% national electoral showing, though retaining a 74% stronghold in Limpopo – one festering certainty underscores the unfolding drama: Fikile Mbalula's handling of this incendiary report ignites urgent debate on governance, succession politics, and whether the ANC's internal mechanisms any longer suffice to curb the destructive power plays undermining collective accountability.

The price of Mbalula's death grip on this truth risks fanning fractures within a party perennially wrestling to reconcile its storied legacy against contemporary compulsions now menacing its core.

The reality of these discrepancies cuts deep, laying bare fault lines that speak to an ANC struggling to contain the centrifugal forces eating away at its foundations – forces in which Fikile Mbalula's actions appear disturbingly complicit, observers warn. As speculation swirls like a gathering storm, the ANC's capacity to confront such internal rot remains an open, and ominous, question.