The Small Business Development Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has reacted to reports that she allegedly misappropriated funds for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign for the African National Congress presidency. She says the weekend reports are based on malice and are devoid of any truth.
Ntshavheni says it’s common knowledge that people like her and other co-ordinators meet with branch party members who need funding for things such as air time, petrol and food. “People now are not invited by paper. They are invited by WhatsApp and follow-up phone calls and they’ve got to have airtime and data to be able to do that so that was what the money was spent on; but secondly, our branches of the ANC are ward-based and our wards are very vast you can find that in one ward there are three or four villages in the case of Limpopo. People then had to be moved from one village to the venue of the meeting and somebody had to pay for petrol.