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JOHANNESBURG: A high official in South Africa’s governing African National Congress was granted bail on Friday, in a graft case that has highlighted divisions inside a celebration whose dominance has been unchallenged because the 1994 finish of white-minority rule.
Ace Magashule, secretary-general and one of many high six strongest officers of the ANC, faces allegations associated to a contract to audit homes with asbestos roofs awarded whereas he was premier of the Free State province.
The fees have put him on a collision course with President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has pledged to wash up the ANC’s picture with a troublesome stance on corruption, however whose detractors accuse him of utilizing it to sideline his opponents.
Magistrate Amos Moos on the Bloemfontein Magistrate Court set the bail for Magashule at 200,000 rand ($12,823.72) and ordered him to look earlier than the court docket on Feb. 19.
“We expect to add three more accused on the charge-sheet,” the National Prosecuting Authority stated in an announcement.
Outside the court docket, hundreds of supporters denounced the trial as a witch hunt, chanting, dancing and waving banners studying “Hands off Comrade Magashule”, footage from nationwide TV channels confirmed.
After showing, Magashule, who had handed himself into the police within the morning, stepped outdoors to handle the group. “I will only step aside if I am asked by the branches who voted me,” he stated, to loud applause.
Some protesters tried to tear down a barbed wire cordon across the court docket whereas others burned yellow ANC T-shirts bearing Ramaphosa’s face, calling on him to step down.
“If you arrest Ace Magashule, you arrest the whole ANC!” one demonstrator shouted.
Magashule is essentially the most high-profile politician to be tried since former president Jacob Zuma, whose trial on graft fees resumes in December.
Magashule is from a faction throughout the governing occasion that has pushed radical financial transformation and has at occasions appeared at odds with the Ramaphosa since he changed Zuma as head of state in February 2018.
“This is a stress test for the ANC,” stated unbiased political analyst Daniel Silke. “Whilst there will be a pushback from those implicated in corruption…, (who) will try to factionalise the debate…, the president has sufficient strength within the broader ANC to withstand this.”
Tellingly, the ANC has not requested Magashule to step down due to the allegations.
Speaking on state broadcaster SABC, ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte warned Magashule supporters, “while we are supporting (him), we should not do so by destroying the very movement that we want to change this country.”
($1 = 15.5961 rand)
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