By Nokuphila Haji | 2025-03-18

PRIME Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini has maintained his stand on the existence of a cabal that is influencing Members of Parliament (MPs) in the country.

He maintained his stand when giving responses yesterday at the Senate during a debate of the prime minister’s office 2025/2026 annual budget performance.
Dlamini said a cabal was a secret political clique or faction or can also be described as a small group of people who create a secret plot.

He said they could not run away from the fact that a cabal existed in the country. Dlamini said the senators should know that the office of the PM has the highest intelligence that comes from different sectors feeding into it.

He said the privilege was that the office gets information that is not being received by just anyone. He said this was why when they say there was a cabal, they do not speak about what they read from newspapers, but because they know that it is there.

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“What is painful is that some members of the cabal know that they are part of it while others are not aware that they support it. Imagine if the nation says they are having their livestock stolen and then we sit down and say there is nothing of that sort instead of standing up and attacking the issue,” he said.

The PM said when they do such, they protect the people who are stealing the livestock. He said they then asked themselves if the people who refuted that livestock was being stolen were the same ones stealing it.

This was after senators asked the PM to tell them who the cabal was. Senator Siphelele Mkhonta said he wanted to do his job, which was holding people accountable. He said he had a question about the PM's statement pertaining to the existence of a cabal that was controlling parliamentarians.
He said this touched him because the cabal was said to be controlling parliamentarians.

Mkhonta said if the cabal was controlling parliamentarians, it means that he was amongst the people that were being controlled, including the chiefs and bantfwabenkhosi that were appointed by the king.
“This has influenced my first question which I would like the PM to clarify and put the nation into clear perspective of what he was saying in this because we are sitting here and afraid to speak because we will not know if we are being controlled by the cabal,” he said.

Mkhonta added that they were in parliament constitutionally to perform their constitutional mandates.
He said he believed the whole country was confused and amazed as to why parliament was being controlled by a cabal.
“Can the PM tell us who the cabal is because when I read the article, I learned that the cabal has motives that are not aligned with government? Can the PM tell what the cabal was doing in parliament,” he said.

Senator Lindiwe Ngwenya said they had discovered that there was a cabal, highlighting that the PM might know who they are.
She asked the PM to help them locate who the cabal was because when they were in parliament, it did not mean that they should handle themselves anyhow. She said the PM should help them as a nation.

“The press office should deny issues that are not true. The office should attend to these things fast, but some of these things should not be fuelled by us and expect the press office to fix the issues,” she said.

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