uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans' Association
The uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans' Association (MKMVA) was an auxiliary political organisation affiliated to South Africa's African National Congress (ANC).
Critics, including a rival veterans' organisation called the MK National Council, condemned MKMVA for its intimacy with the controversial Gupta family and for presenting itself as a paramilitary force aligned to Zuma.
[3] MKMVA also held and administered investments on behalf of its members, including a farm in Doornkuil, Western Cape, which the ANC donated to it.
[3] Like the ANC itself, MKMVA operated in an organisational hierarchy with offices and leadership corps at the local (branch), provincial, and national levels.
[5][6] In subsequent years, the relationship between the organisations became increasingly acrimonious, in particular as MKMVA claimed for itself the right to be viewed as the exclusive legitimate representative of MK veterans.
[6] In line with this resolution, the NEC launched unity talks between representatives of the different groups, alongside a process intended to verify whether MKMVA members were legitimate veterans (see below).
[6] MKMVA remained a staunch opponent of Ramaphosa in this period and continued to support the Zuma-aligned Radical Economic Transformation faction of the ANC.
[9] The conference was addressed by President Ramaphosa and by his deputy, David Mabuza, whom he had charged with overseeing the verification and unification of MK veterans.
[2][13] The MK National Council frequently made this argument, and additionally argued that Maphatsoe's reelection as leader in 2017 was fraudulent because the vote had not been limited to bona fide veterans.
[6] Sources told the Africa Report that MKMVA sought state welfare benefits, designated for military veterans, for all its members, even those too young to plausibly have been in MK.
[9][14][15] Ronnie Kasrils and Mavuso Msimang, among others, claimed that Maphatsoe himself had deserted his MK camp,[16][17] which would have ruled him out as a veteran in terms of MKMVA's own constitution.
In the organisation's final decade, it increasingly volunteered, apparently in an informal capacity, to act as security for the ANC and its leadership, and its threats were frequently directed at Zuma's critics.
[2] In 2009, MKMVA deputy secretary-general Ramatuku Maphutha mounted an infamous defence of Zuma, then a presidential candidate in the national elections, during his prosecution on corruption charges.
Maphutha said:Soldiers [from MKMVA] are deployed all over the country and are waiting to be activated from the trenches to fight the National Prosecuting Authority if they fail to drop charges against Zuma.
[18] In July of that year, Youth League members in Limpopo clashed violently with a group of what they called "hooligans... wearing MKMVA combat [gear]".
[19] The clashes took place outside a church where Zuma was speaking, and Youth League provincial leaders claimed that the assault had been planned in advance.
[13] Blade Nzimande also characterised it as "militia" activity, and warned that, "No democracy can leave unattended the threats for a coup or civil war made from within such quarters".
[27] In November of that year, a group calling itself the MKMVA Freedom Fighters forcibly shut down foreign-owned businesses in and around the Workshop shopping centre in Durban, effectively evicting foreign traders from the area.
[30] On 8 March 2021, a series of attacks on Durban's Victoria Street saw foreign-owned shops vandalised and petrol bombed, and their owners assaulted.
[4] Niehaus, a member of the MKMVA national executive, questioned the legitimacy of the leaks, but Maphatsoe acknowledged that the Guptas had paid for the conference by donation, saying, "It's not a crime to be assisted.
