MK Party's eThekwini mayoral candidate defers answering Nomvalo's allegations until after the vote

The MK Party’s eThekwini mayoral candidate, Apostle Mxolisi Phakathi, will not answer Sibonelo Nomvalo’s allegations against him until after Wednesday’s local government elections, saying he is too busy campaigning to win one of the country’s biggest metros.

As IOL reported on 2 November, Phakathi said he would deal with the claims only once the vote is done. Asked to respond, he told the outlet: “I don’t play the man, I play the ball.” He said the party was focused on preparing its structures and that “we will engage him after elections”.

Nomvalo, the party’s former secretary-general, says Phakathi and former eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede were among the leaders who told party leader Jacob Zuma falsehoods about him, and that this cost him both his position and his seat in Parliament. He made the claims in a letter to Zuma dated 22 October, which is circulating on social media, and repeated them at a press briefing in Durban on Friday.

Phakathi’s reply was short. He accused Nomvalo of political bankruptcy and said: “He knows what he has been doing, and in due time people will know what is happening.” He is confident the allegations will not move eThekwini voters. “Whatever you do now will not change what our people think, as they have already made their decision,” he said. Phakathi is national chairperson of the MK Party and pastor of the Twelve Apostles’ Church in Christ.

Gumede, who left the ANC on 13 July to be appointed the MK Party’s KwaZulu-Natal deputy convener, has not responded to a request for comment. MK Party spokesperson Sifiso Mahlangu did not respond when asked whether Zuma or the party was in a position to answer Nomvalo’s claims.

Nomvalo’s account turns on who controlled the party’s deployment of candidates to municipalities. He says the trouble began when he was appointed secretary-general. He told Zuma he has evidence and witnesses for his claim that Gumede and Phakathi are among those bringing factionalism into the party, and that their aim is control of deployments for local municipalities. He says the two went to Zuma at Zimbali a day after he announced local election deployment committees, which he says was a resolution of the national officials, and that the timing was no coincidence.

At the briefing he said he first heard of the decision to remove him on 2 October. He listed what he called fake intelligence reports submitted to Zuma, including that he stole party money to buy cattle. “In fact these cows were procured in 2023 when I was practising as an attorney,” he said.

He also said he asked Zuma to let him resign, or alternatively to appoint Zuma’s son Duduzane as first deputy president so that signing powers would not rest with a leader he said would sign on wrong information. According to Nomvalo, Zuma agreed to appoint Duduzane and asked him not to resign.

Nomvalo alleged that Phakathi spread word that Zuma, while in hospital, had instructed him to lead a team with Gumede to consolidate the party’s proportional representation and KwaZulu-Natal mayoral candidates. He said he asked someone who had visited Zuma in hospital to check, and was told the president had given no such instruction. He then used his powers as secretary-general, with the concurrence of the first deputy president, to instruct structures to form deployment committees across the country.

He said that after those instructions went out, Phakathi and Gumede went to Zuma with further allegations, including that he had fired eight people in Parliament. That, he said, was a misreading of a decision by the chief whip to change her whippery, and the chief whip had since explained it to Zuma in person. He denied tampering with the candidate list, saying the president had appointed the people who handled it. He also denied claims that voters in more than 30 eThekwini wards threatened not to vote for the party unless he was removed, and that he took money from politicians outside the party to sabotage it.

When Zuma removed Nomvalo, he cited concerns about the party’s candidate nomination process, internal factionalism, delays in distributing campaign materials, changes in the parliamentary caucus without leadership approval, and high-level deployment committees set up without the knowledge of leadership structures. On the day of the demotion he instructed the party’s parliamentary leader, John Hlophe, to reverse changes to the whippery and restore it to how it was before.

For eThekwini voters the argument lands in the last days of a campaign in the metro with the largest budget and the most wards in the country, where the MK Party is contesting control of the city council. The dispute is over internal appointments and candidate lists rather than the delivery of water, electricity, refuse collection and housing that the next council will be judged on. Phakathi’s position is that none of it changes how people will vote on Wednesday. Nomvalo’s is that the leadership was steered by reports he says were false, and that he has the evidence to show it.

What the public record does not yet carry is any answer from Gumede, from Zuma or from the party to the specific claims. Until those answers come, the allegations stand as Nomvalo’s account, made in a letter and repeated at a briefing, and Phakathi’s response stands as a promise to deal with them after the election.