HARARE - South Africans should stop calling the ANC corrupt because that was simply not true, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.

Zuma was addressing a rally organised by the SA Unemployed Workers Union (Sauwu) in East London, the Weekend Post reported.

“People are saying this but it is untrue,” he told a packed house at the Orient Theatre.

The president also criticised people who said South Africa’s poverty and wealth gap had widened since the ruling party took over in 1994.

“No one in the country knew how big the gap was before 1994 ... we discovered it, so how can they say something else,” he said.

However, Zuma said the gap had decreased through grants and black economic empowerment.

“Fifteen million people have been taken out of poverty... so it is not true.”

But Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University political analyst Jolene Steyn-Kotze said Zuma’s statement was more of an opinion.

She said comparisons needed to be made between 2001, 2004 and 2012 to get an accurate picture or where the country was in terms of the income gap and inequality.

“My suspicion is that the gap has actually increased and not lessened,” she said.

“A small percent of people control the wealth globally. South Africa cannot be an exception to that.”

She made an example of Marikana where the income gap between the management and miners was big.

Of Zuma’s statements that the ANC was not corrupt she said the party was well aware that the general elections were coming up and Zuma wanted to win favour with the workers.

“The transparency index, which measures corruption across the world, shows that corruption in South Africa is in fact growing and that we are actually close to Zimbabwe in terms of the state corruption.

“Since Zuma has taken power, the corruption index has increased.” — Sapa