South African musician Papa Penny, who served as a councillor at the Giyani Local Municipality for over a decade, has quit the ruling ANC to join the newly formed MK Party led by former president Jacob Zuma.
The resignation of Papa Penny has been taken as a huge blow for the ANC, as the musician was reportedly regarded as a people’s person who had worked hard to further the interests of the party in the last few years.
When asked about his resignation, Papa Penny said he did not want to disclose the reasons for his fallout with the ruling party.
“There is no wife or husband who can divorce without any problems, but I cannot spoil the ANC. I have to talk about my new home, and the problems between me and the people of the ANC.”
Papa Penny defended Zuma from those who accused him of being corrupt.
“No one is clean. If you want to go for who’s dirty – everybody is dirty.
“People need service delivery, we need [a strong] economy in South Africa, we need to bring people together, we have to unite South Africa, we have to clean the suffering people, the poor people in the streets.”
According to The Citizen, some of the municipality’s workers were aggrieved by Papa Penny’s resignation from the ANC.
“I always saw Penny Penny as a role model, an influencer and a fearless cadre of the movement we all could copy good deeds from,” said an official from Giyani local municipality, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
“Now that he has branched to the MK party, I feel lost. I don’t know whether to follow him or not. I don’t even know his reasons for jumping ship, but I always had respect for this man politically,” said the municipal employee.
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