INCOMING Absa chief executive officer Maria Ramos and the banking group’s chairperson, Gill Marcus, attended the ANC’s national executive committee meeting merely to keep relations “warm” between the party and the private institution, the ANC said yesterday.

“Disciplined cadres from the ANC do give information to the ANC when they are moving,” secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said in response to a question at a media briefing on why they were at the NEC on Friday.

“What we do with it (the information) is not a big deal…” he said.

Ramos announced her resignation from Transnet on Friday. Shortly afterwards she said she would take over from Absa’s outgoing CEO Steve Booysen at the end of February .

Absa was a private institution that did not belong to the ANC, he said.

“But Maria Ramos and Gill Marcus historically have been members of the ANC, therefore it is important to us to keep the relations warm, even if we have no control over them.”

The listed company came under fire from the party’s youth league recently.

The league suggested that Wendy Luhabe may have used her influence at a luncheon the banking group was hosting to lobby for her husband Mbhazima Shilowa’s party, the Congress of the People.

They also alleged she could channel funds from the Public Investment Corporation, which she chairs, for this purpose. Luhabe and the companies denied both accusations.

Asked whether Ramos’s partner, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, also planned a career change, Mantashe laughed and said: “No, no, no.”

It was customary for ANC members holding high office in government to notify the party first if they intended leaving their jobs, although the ANC was caught on the back foot when a slew of resignations, including Manuel’s, followed that of former President Thabo Mbeki in September.

After the rand reacted to the news negatively, Manuel moved swiftly to say this was merely a courtesy to allow the incoming President to select his own Cabinet.

Manuel was duly re-appointed by President Kgalema Motlanthe.

Mantashe continued: “Trevor is a member of the ANC. Maria is a member of the ANC…Husbands don’t join the ANC on behalf of their wives. Wives join and husbands join and children join.”

He joked that he had three children and was still lobbying them to vote for the ANC, not taking it for granted that they would do so automatically. — Sapa