Bizarre Things the ANC Women’s League Has Said

This week the ANC Women’s League not only stood behind President Jacob Zuma, but said that Public Protector Thuli Madonsela was too popular to be in her position. This isn’t the first time the ANCWL has come out with some strange remarks – and been criticised for them.

Then yesterday, Thursday, the league president, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, was booed so much in Port Elizabeth’s New Brighton township that she started crying. Watch video below:

The ANCWL, which is often accused of being pro-Zuma rather than pro-women, is probably best remembered and most criticised for protesting in favour of Zuma at his rape trail in 2006. Interestingly, the ANCWL has no statements on its website from 2006.

The league did, however, support the family of Reeva Steenkamp in the trial of Oscar Pistorius and even held a march in remembrance of her. That was followed, alas, by a huge blunder after the ruling by a league spokeswoman saying “Steenkamp must rot in jail”. The video (below) went viral.

The league also stood behind the woman who accused Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman of sexual harassment earlier this year. It also voiced its opposition to forced virginity testing after the uThukela District Municipality announced a bursary to virgins. Its president said forced virginity testing was “steeped in patriarchal practices that serve to oppress women”.

In its statement on Wednesday in defense of Zuma, ANCWL secretary-general Meokgo Matuba went on a fairly long rant about Madonsela, Thabo Mbeki, Trevor Manuel and his wife, former Department of Finance member and now chief of Barclays Africa Maria Ramos.

About Madonsela, whose report on Nkandla was what Zuma had long disputed but the Constitutional Court found was correct and binding, the league said: “We demand a more objective and less populist person who will campaign against government and its people but defend principles of the structures.”

About a report it said Madonsela had failed to investigate: “The Rembrandt Group headed by Anton Rupert, who also called for President Jacob Zuma to resign after the con-court ruling made by Chief Justice, Adv. Mogoeng Mogoeng, is implicated in the report.” (Rupert died about a decade ago. Who is Adv. Mogoeng?)

In response to statements against Zuma by religious leaders and former Umkhonto we Sizwe generals, it called them “false religious prophets and veterans who have been fed to their stomachs by our former oppressors”.

About the Guptas: “The Gupta Family formally introduced by our then President Thabo Mbeki to President Jacob Zuma remains a mystery as to the unfair amount of attack they are facing, even after allowing the invasions of many institutions such as the Oppenheimer’s, the Rupert’s and the Barclays to continue to gain resources of our beloved state.” (Mbeki denied this allegation before and after the statement.)

The league was also not happy with ANC members coming out in public with allegations against the Guptas after deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas: “The subsequent manner of raising further allegations among which (sic) date back as far back as 2010 smacks of bad intentions that are not helping the Organisation.”

After a group of ANC women bared their bottoms at a protest in Pretoria in January, the league reprimanded them for these “foreign tendencies”. “The demonstration was in bad taste and displays a moral decay that emanates from foreign tendencies within the ANC such as factionalism and clique politics.” 

In October 2015 the league marched to the Union Buildings – shortly after students had done likewise – but their march was in support of Zuma, who they felt had been denigrated in a painting showing him in a compromising position with a woman. “We condemn the denigration of the image of President Zuma by so-called artists.”

In January 2015, the league’s former president Angie Motshekga (now Minister of Basic Education) said, “If President Jacob Zuma says young women must marry and other things, let’s not make a big thing out of it.”

Two comedy sketches about the ANCWL. First up, comedian Loyiso Gola’s take on them: