Fikile Mbalula Slams Claim He Ran Secret Budget Talks With Da: 'pure Fiction'

African National Congress ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula has dismissed a claim that he oversaw secret budget talks with the Democratic Alliance DA.

A Sunday Times report claims Mbalula set up a secret negotiating team separate from the ANCs official one. It further claims that the rest of the partys top seven leaders confronted him about it.

In a statement on Sunday 6 April, the ANC rejected the claim, describing it as a false, divisive and malicious narrative.

This is a fabrication with no basis in reality - pure fiction posing as journalism, authored by wedge-drivers desperate to sow division in our movement, it added.

We state it categorically: no such meeting, as alleged, ever took place. The report is the product of faceless sources and underhanded misinformation campaigns, aimed at distracting the ANC from its revolutionary tasks and misleading the public.

The ANC and DA reached a deadlock on the budgets fiscal framework . Consequently, the DA voted against it in Parliament last week. The two are the largest parties in the government of national unity GNU.

The ANCs chief whip in Parliament, Mdumiseni Ntuli, has been leading talks with other parties on the budget. However, the party said Mbalula convenes all internal meetings and leads all matters relating to the GNU.

These matters are consistently reported to ANC officials, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is pure mischief, it said.

As the ANC, we will not communicate through unnamed sources who peddle innuendo and factional gossip. We will always speak for ourselves. The Secretary-General remains firmly in charge of negotiations, supported by collective leadership and guided by the ANC constitution.

Both the DA and ANC are contemplating whether or not the former should remain in the GNU. The DAs Federal Executive held meetings over the weekend. However, it has not made a firm decision yet.