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South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba has vowed that there would be “hell to pay” if he were removed from the ANC.

In an interview with Isolezwe on Monday, Gigaba said: “I grew up in the ANC. There is another young man that once insisted he would never leave the ANC. After that, he ended up leaving and starting his own political party.”

This in an apparent stab at EFF leader Julius Malema, who had earlier mocked Gigaba following the leaking of a “sex tape” featuring the minister.

“I will never leave the ANC, it will only occur if I am removed by somebody; even then, I will not say anything and lie down and allow people to walk all over me.

“I have people that have grown with me in the ANC; let them dare touch me and there will be hell to pay,” Gigaba told Isolezwe on Monday that, according to Gigaba, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises was now part of a “campaign” aimed at destroying him.

This following reports of a leaked preliminary report into electricity provider Eskom.

Gigaba and former public enterprises minister Lynne Brown are among 44 people and 25 companies who should be criminally investigated over alleged mismanagement and corruption at the utility.

This comes in the wake of calls for Gigaba to be fired or to resign. He has refused to do the latter, leaving it to President Cyril Ramaphosa to make a decision.

“It’s a well-orchestrated political campaign. It is unfortunate that the portfolio committee has thrown itself into the very same process,” Gigaba said on Monday.
Gigaba also claimed that the leaking of the video had been politically motivated.

“We (Gigaba and his wife) have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of,” he reportedly told SABC.

“I don’t have a problem . . . It was intended to embarrass me, to decapacitate me politically, to humiliate me and my family publicly, to embarrass the African National Congress,” he said.

Gigaba served as finance minister for a year under former president Jacob Zuma, who was ousted in February. When President Cyril Ramaphosa succeeded Zuma, he moved Gigaba to the home affairs ministry in February 2018.

— Sapa