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The DA intends to formally approach the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to have the ANC investigated as a criminal enterprise.
In a press briefing at Parliament on Wednesday, DA leader Mmusi Maimane, along with MPs Natasha Mazzone and Glynnis Breytenbach, announced that the party would ask NPA head advocate Shamila Batohi to charge the ANC, as an organisation, with racketeering.
"Today I have decided to formally approach the newly appointed National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP)," Maimane said.
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"My call today is that instead, she should now charge the ANC as a racketeering enterprise."
Referring to the ANC, Maimane described a "triangle of corruption" through which a political party captures the state and subsequently gives contracts to a company that finances the political party.
This, according to the DA leader, is tantamount to racketeering and, by extension, means that "politicking is but merely a front for racketeering".
Lack of information on turning testimony into evidence
Evidence of this alleged criminal racket goes as far back as 2001 to the arms deal and has been evident more recently in the successive VBS and Bosasa scandals, as well as the testimony and allegations emanating from the various commissions of inquiry, he continued.
Maimane further noted that these were "symptoms of a racketeering organisation".
"We are convinced that the ANC has been set up as an institution that is designed not only to capture the state, but to act in a racketeering manner."
Maimane said he had asked that a full investigation "into the ANC itself, as an organisation" be opened.
Advocate Glynnis Breytenbach voiced her concern that there was lack of communication with the public about the progress and work being done regarding testimony coming out of the various commissions being converted into evidence.
She added that Maimane had sent a letter to advocate Batohi which sets out the party's view, supplemented by an attachment with information and evidence in the public domain, particularly information surrounding Eskom.
Breytenbach stated that she hoped that the new NDPP would "concentrate her efforts in investigating the ANC as an entity that has legal personality and therefore [is] capable of being prosecuted".
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