LABOUR Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has challenged DA leader Helen Zille to produce proof that senior ANC members leaked information to her party in order to undermine former Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool.

Delivering the Oliver Tambo memorial lecture in KwaNokuthula, Plettenberg Bay, Mdladlana said there would be “serious consequences”, whether or not Zille’s claims were found to be true.

“If what she said is not true, then she deliberately misled Parliament. If she can produce proof, then the two (ANC) comrades will sink in the same boat as the one Zille will go down in if she is found to be lying.”

Last week, Zille reportedly told the Western Cape legislature that former ANC provincial executive members Max Ozinsky and Mcebisi Skwatsha leaked information to the DA, apparently as part of a deliberate strategy to discredit Rasool before he was eventually sacked as premier in July last year.

The ANC’s national leadership has blamed infighting for the party’s loss of control of the province to the DA in the April elections.

Mdladlana also berated Rasool for his subsequent comment that the ANC should show the same determination in dealing with Ozinsky and Skwatsha as the party had displayed when dismissing him.

“There was no need for him to go to the media. The ANC has the structures capable of ... disciplining comrades.”

Zille has reportedly said she will co-operate with an ANC ad hoc committee investigating her claims.