Zuma plot is real: Masetlha

ANC national executive committee member Billy Masetlha has become the first senior ruling party member to openly say the alleged plot to oust Jacob Zuma as ANC president next year is real.

"I know who they are talking to and how they want to do this. I am not going to keep quiet and watch people destroying the organisation," he told the Mail&Guardian reported on Friday.

Masetlha's comment came on Thursday, the same day that Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale said he had instructed his lawyers to advise him on the need for any criminal or civil action to be taken, since his name appeared in reports of the alleged plot.

A reported covert intelligence document claims that a group of "anti-Zuma" members, called the "Mvela Group", met in Estcourt on January 23 to allegedly plot the removal of Zuma.

They allegedly include Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, KwaZulu-Natal premier Zweli Mkhize, ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa, ANC NEC member and former ANCYL president Fikile Mbalula, Limpopo premier Cassel Mathale, ANC Gauteng chairman Paul Mashatile, ANC deputy secretary general Thandi Modise, and NEC members David Mabuza, Enoch Gondongwana and Tony Yengeni.

Sexwale was once before implicated in a plot to remove former president Thabo Mbeki to make way for Zuma.

Sexwale said in a statement: "What is strikingly different this time round is that rumour has a return address. This is traceable to one of South Africa's courts in Boksburg where government declassified documents containing these allegations [were] presented by Lt. General [Richard] Mdluli, Head of Crime Intelligence Division within the South African Police Service."

Mdluli, court orderly Samuel Dlomo, Colonel Nkosana Sebastian Ximba, and Lieutenant-Colonel Mtunzi-Omhle Mthembeni Mtunzi, are currently facing a charge of allegedly murdering Oupa Abel Ramogibe in 1999. He was the husband of a former girlfriend of Mdluli.

Mdluli has claimed there is a conspiracy against him by top police officials and during his bail application submitted a letter he wrote to Zuma about this. He attached a claim that according to his information there was a conspiracy by Mbeki to take over intelligence ahead of the ANC's 2012 elective conference.

Various publications, including City Press and the Sunday Independent have run articles on an alleged plot against Zuma, based on a separate document Mdluli obtained on an investigation into National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele.