/ 29 October 2008

Don’t disrupt our meetings, Lekota tells ANC

Suspended former African National Congress (ANC) chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota will not resign from the party he has belonged to for more than 30 years because that will look like he is running away.

”If I write a letter and resign, then they are going to say, there he ran. I am not going to do that,” Lekota told a debate on South African politics with representatives of other political parties, including ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte, in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

Lekota said South Africans had to get used to the idea of being free to listen to all political parties.

”There is no such thing in a democracy that you can say: ‘I can have your vote until Jesus Christ comes’. That’s out … no party has the right to say ‘Don’t talk to people, they are my voters’,” he said. He was referring to a comment made by ANC president Jacob Zuma.

He said South Africa’s democracy was currently like an infant with teething problems with a ”runny tummy”, and ”cries all night”.

He demanded from Duarte that further convention meetings not be disrupted by ANC members after scuffles at a meeting in Orange Farm last week.

”Can you give us a guarantee there will not be ANC members to smash them up?” he asked.

Some residents of Khutsong said on Wednesday that ANC dissidents would be physically harmed if they went to the North West town at the centre of a demarcation dispute.

Reaction to Lekota and others from the ANC lobbying for a national convention and possibly a new political party has led to concerns about political intolerance in the run-up to the 2009 election.

African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe earlier asked why the ANC did not immediately respond to Lekota being likened to a dog by ANC Women’s League president Angie Motshekga, or ANC Youth president Julius Malema saying he would ”kill for Zuma”.

Duarte said: ”No ANC member should go to any political party meeting and try to disrupt them. Action will be taken against them.”

The party had already told members to ”stay away from those meetings”, she said, although they could go and listen if they wanted to.

They also believed that the statements on Khutsong, where Lekota had unsuccessfully tried to broker peace previously, could not be accepted.

But, she added, it would be ”helpful” if there was less of an attack on the ANC and that the lobbying, which could lead to a new political party, was not done in the ANC’s ”space”.

Duarte said there was currently an air of ”Malemaphobia” over the ”kill for Zuma” comment, but he had been called in about it by the party.

However, Lekota countered that Malema’s comments had stayed in the public mind.

”I apply my mind, I think … I don’t say: ‘I’ll kill’, then say ‘no, no, no, I don’t mean that’ …”

Advice
The Freedom Front Plus’s Pieter Mulder quipped that he could offer advice on party splits because he had been through some. He suggested not launching a party in anger.

Lekota said this weekend’s convention would be to gather ideas. He urged observers to wait for policy directions to emerge from the event.

Duarte said the ANC did not anticipate a breakaway workers’ federation from within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), as had been suggested. She denied that the ANC’s policies were driven by alliance partners Cosatu and the South African Communist Party.

Lekota said that last year at a central executive committee meeting of Cosatu, the names of wealthier parliamentarians were put into a booklet. Members were then told to flood ANC meetings to ”vote these bourgeoisie out”.

”You don’t want intellectuals, you don’t want businesspeople … this is what the Malemas are saying and you don’t repudiate them,” he said.

He said there was a marked shift in the ANC after its Polokwane conference, with certain people being ”hounded out”.

But Duarte said Lekota was part of a ”cabal” that had not allowed free speech in the party.

”You were the cabal, Terror … you were telling us what to do … that is over,” said Duarte in a heated moment.

Lekota’s suspension came after he publicly questioned the behaviour of some of Zuma’s supporters and the way the party was supporting him.

Duarte said that since the leadership change that came with the election of a new party president and executive in December, there was an openness in the party.

”We can even challenge you, Terror,” said Duarte, who, with Lekota, had been comrades in the struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime. — Sapa