National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete has handed a damning affidavit to President Jacob Zuma about allegations that a minister had tried to interfere in a state capture inquiry.

Parliamentary public enterprises committee evidence leader Ntuthuzelo Vanara submitted the affidavit‚ claiming that state security minister Bongani Bongo had offered him a blank cheque to resign from the parliamentary probe into Eskom.

“The president is acting on it as we speak and we will wait for that outcome‚” said Mbete.

She was speaking in a wide-ranging interview on the Karima Brown Show on Radio 702 www.702.co.za on Monday evening.

Tales of corruption and meddling have emerged as MPs continue to dig into allegations of state capture at Eskom.

Vanara has come under pressure during the inquiry‚ with the department of public enterprises approaching state law advisors and threatening to report him to the bar council for “unethical behaviour”.

DA MP Natasha Mazzone claimed that her car was tampered with and that she had been followed. Mbete said: “It is very disturbing.”

She was on the show as one of the presidential candidates for the ANC’s elective conference next month.

Mbete said ANC members who bought votes and created bogus party branches to sway the elective conference must be kicked out of the party.

“Those are the people that are going to make sure that the ANC has perpetual problems instead of attending to the problems of our people.”

She defended Zuma on the possible corruption charges hanging over his head‚ because she said‚ “nothing has happened by way of evidence being brought forward”.

“By now we should be talking of history of him having gone through a case.”

According to Mbete‚ Zuma remained president because he was elected by the party. This despite surviving votes of no confidence and a Constitutional Court ruling that he had violated the constitution.

“We owe it to our own legacy to let him finish off his term in dignity and the dignity of the ANC‚ however much criticism we accept of our people‚ but we think that it must not be an easy thing to just get rid of your leadership.”

Mbete described herself as a feminist‚ but refused to say if she believed that Zuma had raped Fezeka Kuzwayo‚ known as Khwezi.

“I believe that I don’t want to deal with this question. The courts dealt with it. I am not getting into it.”

Mbete said she was nominated to stand as a party presidential candidate. “When you are called upon to serve‚ to do the work of the organisation‚ you don’t reject that.”

Mbete said the ANC must eliminate the “fear” of being led by a woman. “Charlotte Maxeke was there at the founding [ANC] conference.”

She would serve whoever the ANC elected‚ she added.

She lambasted political murderers as “criminals”.

“The fact that someone went and got themselves a membership card does not mean anything. If they kill other people‚ they are criminals and they must be treated like criminals.”

[Source: