Chronicle Editor
Johannesburg- The ANC is likely to place on its agenda the bitter Twitter war involving two of its senior leaders, Fikile Mbalula and Lindiwe Sisulu, who are seemingly discussing internal party disputes on social media.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe on Sunday said that the party was not preoccupied with the matter but was likely to give attention to it during its next national executive committee or national working committee meeting.
However, political analysts Prof Susan Booysen and Dr Ralph Mathekga have described the Twitter war as worrying and demeaning conduct by senior officials of the party. They expressed their views following a latest call by Sisulu to the ANC secretary-general, Ace Magashule, to file disciplinary charges against Mbalula for allegedly calling her a criminal.
Mbalula has denied allegations against him.
While Booysen was of the view that the war was demeaning, she said it gave the public a glimpse of what was happening internally within the party.
“It is ungracious and demeaning,” she said.
Booysen also said that the ANC had been unable to answer several questions in the public domain of people and institutions wanting to know who the party’s funders were. “If the ANC can’t answer these questions, people are likely to go with the flow on social media. It is difficult to say the ANC must discipline its members. It is a two-edged sword. It is adding a dimension to the ANC’s communication preserve,” Booysen said.
Mathekga was also brutal in his opinion of the two leaders, saying “they are adults who belong to the same party. They must exercise a habit of taking each other on at internal forums.”
He said the two were behaving as if they’ve “just discovered Twitter.”
“They must engage within party dialogue forums and not humiliate each other in public,” Mathekga said.
Sisulu lodged an official complaint against Mbalula last week. The Twitter war began on March 8 when Sisulu posted a picture of a dinner party hosted by former president Jacob Zuma for all the candidates who were vying for the ANC presidential post ahead of their elective conference in December 2017.-IOL.
Online Reporter