Staff Reporter
The ANC integrity committee has recommended that party secretary-general Ace Magashule must immediately step aside pending the outcome of his fraud case.
Magashule appeared before the integrity committee at the weekend after he was formally charged in an asbestos corruption case in the Free State last month.
Business Day reports that the ANC integrity committee has recommended that he should step down pending the outcome of the court case.
Magashule is facing 21 charges of, among others, corruption, fraud, alternatively theft and money laundering.
The committee, made up of party elders, reportedly said in its final report that if the secretary-general resisted the decision of the ANC’s national executive committee, the party must consider suspending him.
Magashule met the integrity committee on Saturday after voluntarily offering to appear before it.
The party has recently been deliberating on its decision that those formally charged with corruption or other serious crimes must step aside pending the outcome of court processes.
Last week, ANC national officials started developing a new framework on dealing with those who are formally charged with corruption and other serious crimes.
Following his appearance in the Bloemfontein Magistrates Court on November 13, a defiant Magashule, who is also the former premier of the Free State, told his supporters that no one, besides the branches, has the power to tell him to step aside or resign, following the allegations.
“I was elected by branches at conference. I will go back to a special conference and the branches must say to me ‘Comrade Ace Magashule step aside.’ I will then do so . . . Nobody and nobody can remove us,” he said in a televised address outside the court.
Magashule was released on R200 000 bail and he is expected back in court on February 19, 2021.