OPEN LETTER: Dear Mondli “Mr Conscience” Gungubele, Tholukuthi Hey….

President Jacob Zuma and Mondli Gungubele with family of slain SACP leader Chris Hani

I’VE tried so hard not to write this note, pondering wether to engage you personally or not. Then I remembered that we once had a conversation at the gym about this. Oh, actually you did the talking and I had to listen to your thoughts. But then my conscience said I should write this note.

For four years I worked close to you when you were the Executive Mayor of Ekurhuleni. For a long time I tried to understand your leadership style and interactions with people. I even asked people that you had worked with you for longer than I had. The less I talk about what they thought of your leadership the better.

Let’s cut the bull and get to the real reason I’m writing this. You seem to be trending and are the talk of town regarding your sudden realisation that your conscience exists. I don’t really think that your sudden voice of reason comes solely out of your love and jealousy for the ANC. It’s more of you trying to gain popularity and relevance as we head to the National Conference in December. For you this is an opportune time to be in the public discourse since you no longer have a role that can give you airtime with journalists.

Let’s talk about your conscience and how it guided you when you went out of your way to divide the then Regional Interim Leadership Core (RILC). You ensured that you use the deployment of cadres into the municipality to control the work of RILC and how they discharged their responsibility as ANC leaders. You didn’t just stop there, you went-on to saw divisions in the Regional Executive Council (REC) that was led by Cdes Mocha and Tshilidzi. You created your own cabal in the REC and deployed those that were willing to take instructions from you regarding the affairs of the ANC in the region. You literally collapsed the organisation and the trust amongst leaders. You became a law unto yourself when the new leadership of the region came into office. You refused to engage and and didn’t want to be given the mandate as resolved by conference at St’ George’s Hotel. Instead you did everything in your power to disregard and disrespect the collective as led by Mazwai and Teliswa.

Let me ask a question; what made you agree to rejoin the ANC Caucus in the National Assembly as an MP? Was the same President of the ANC not a member of that Caucus? I have an answer for you. All the bad issues that you refer to were not enough reason for your conscience to tell you not to be part of a Caucus that has lost the values of the ANC. That, is because you were desperate to have a source of income than a conscience that would assist you in raising critical issues that were already taking place in the ANC Caucus.

When you were still Executive Mayor of Ekurhuleni, you consciously hired few unqualified people into Senior Management – even hired your girlfriend and ensured that you move her into a safer space (another department) before your term ended. Some comrades had to motivate three times in your branch meeting for your name to meet the threshold for nomination. Tholukuthi consciously, branches in Ekurhuleni rejected you, even after you had used jobs as patronage in your quest to retain mayorship after 2016 elections.

Tholukuthi you are a parasite, tholukuthi hey, tholukuthi you a populist. Tholukuthi hey you an opportunist, hey that thinks it’s the only intelligent comrade that the ANC has ever had in its lifetime. Hey hey.

The writer is an ex-employee of ANC MP Mondli Gungubele