ANC secretary-general Mbalula said the decision to remove David Masondo as principal of the OR Tambo School of Leadership was purely an alignment issue. It will see former Gauteng Premier David Makhura take up the role.
The African National Congress (ANC)’s national executive committee has moved to replace David Masondo with David Makhura as head of its OR Tambo political school.
It's resolved to instruct the school’s chairperson, former deputy ANC president Kgalema Motlanthe and its board to remove Masondo.
The deputy finance minister, who was the principal of the school, has developed it into a platform used by the ANC to train those it appoints to serve in the different municipalities and legislatures.
A turf war over control of the school had been brewing, with a lecture on the recent Zimbabwean elections at the centre of the power struggle.
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula denied that the talk involving Zanu-PF critic, Professor Ibbo Mandaza, was the reason for the changes.
Mbalula said the decision to remove Masondo as principal of the OR Tambo School of Leadership was purely an alignment issue.
It will see former Gauteng Premier David Makhura take up the role.
Mbalula said this was because Makhura was a full-time deployee and was the ANC's head of political education.
"But Makhura is the political commissar of the ANC, he is the man responsible for ideological thinking in the movement," Mbalula said.
The secretary-general insists this has nothing to do with a recent anti-Zanu-PF lecture, which Mbalula is accused of attempting to block.
But in the same breath, he launched an attack on the school for giving just Professor Mandaza a platform.
"It must not be a propaganda tool, for one group, here in South Africa, that doesn’t like Mnangwagwa as a president and Zanu-PF."
Mbalula said that Masondo would continue to play some role in the school.
