Former police minister Nathi Nhleko resigns from the ANC

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Former police minister Nathi Nhleko has become one of the latest senior ANC officials to jump ship less than three months general elections day.

Nhleko became famous and made headlines in the media when he became one of the senior members to defend former President Jacob Zuma in Parliament by justifying security upgrades at his private residence even when the Constitutional Court found that they were wrong for doing the upgrades and calling a swimming pool a fire pool.

He recently gained media attention again following a public outburst by the party’s Secretary General (SG) Fikile Mbalula who said they went against the court ruling to defend Zuma but now he is turning his back against the party.

Nhleko said Mbalula was wrong to say private party discussions out in public because it paints a bad picture for the party. An audio that was supposedly sent to the party by Nhleko was leaked to the public where he said that Mbalula is the worst SG they have ever had and the party will pay a heavy price for his reckless behaviour.

A resignation letter said to be written by Nhleko was leaked to the media on Monday where he said that unfortunately he cannot continue to be part of the party anymore because it has moved away from it’s core mandate and does not align with his values.

He accused the party of neglecting the citizens and destroying SOEs.

“I resign from this African National Congress as its current values and principles are not aligned to mine. It is difficult to continue watching people in my community and all over our country suffer because of the failures of an organisation that I am part of…”

“The trend to gradually dismantling state-owned enterprises and subsequently privatizing them covertly is exemplified by the situation at Transnet. Transnet transport volumes exceeded 220 million tons in 2018, by 2022, this figure had dwindled to nearly 170 million tons.”

He also made mention the party is deviating away from it’s founding principles.