communications. However, it was Faith Muthambi and not Magashule
who replaced Yunus Carrim in the portfolio.
Manyoni thinks he may have ‘ruined’ the grand plan to include
Magashule in Zuma’s cabinet with his negative responses at
Saxonwold. Having no one they could trust to take over as premier in
the Free State meant that Magashule had to stay where he was.
Despite the failure of what appeared to have been plan A, Muthambi
proved to be a most helpful communications minister as far as the
Guptas were concerned. The so-called #GuptaLeaks, a series of leaked
emails and documents from servers of Gupta-owned companies, later
revealed that she had emailed important documents relating to the
broadcasting industry to one of the family’s known lieutenants.^5
Manyoni’s relationship with Magashule, meanwhile, started to
deteriorate in 2014 and throughout the following year.
In June 2016 , as the ANC was preparing for that year’s local
government elections, the party gave Manyoni the boot as Mangaung’s
mayor. After a meeting of its NEC, it announced the names of several
‘mayoral candidates’ for the upcoming elections.^6 It was the first time
ever that the ANC released such a list.
The would-be mayor for Mangaung was Olly Mlamleli, a staunch
Magashule ally. According to Manyoni, he was led to believe that he
would simply swop places with Mlamleli, who at that point served as
the Free State’s MEC for cooperative governance, traditional affairs
and human settlements. Manyoni was told that the NEC, the party’s
highest authority between elective conferences, had sanctioned the
decision. Given his background as chairperson of the South African
Local Government Association, the intended move made sense to him.
But it was not to be. Instead, Manyoni was sent to Parliament in Cape
nora
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