/ 13 December 2008

Cope members stream into Bloem

Delegates at the Congress of the People’s first national conference in Bloemfontein were being guided through the registration process at the University of the Free State’s campus by 1pm on Saturday.

About 4 000 delegates were expected at the conference, with the theme ”A New Agenda For Change and Hope”.

Everything appeared to be running smoothly at the campus. Delegates from Limpopo were the first to arrive and were registered by 10am. Several delegates from the Free State also arrived during the morning.

Inside the big assembly hall, delegates were quickly helped through about twenty registration points and were handed a yellow Cope T-Shirt.

Interim chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota told the Mail & Guardian that delegates were expected to adopt the breakaway movement’s policy documents as well as officially adopt the name and logo.

Charlotte Lobe, the party’s general secretary, said this week that delegates would decide the leadership matter by consensus.

Lekota said it was too early to hold elections.

‘We need to work on a full concept of the structure of the party, we’ll then be able to hold an elective conference.”

Lobe reckoned the party would call an elective conference after two years.

The conference follows a Pretoria High Court ruling on Friday that Cope can use the name ”Congress of the People”.

The ANC had argued that the group used the name to gain instant credibility, because it was also the name of the event in 1955 that gave birth to the ruling party’s Freedom Charter.

The first signs of a breakaway came when Lekota — the former defence minister — said he felt the party was moving away from its founding principles and that a ”divorce” was imminent. The complaint revolved mainly around the ANC’s support for its president, Jacob Zuma, during the corruption investigation against him.

Cope was the movement’s third choice of name after it learnt that the names South African National Convention and South African Democratic Congress were already taken.

Speaking outside the Pretoria High Court, spokesperson Carl Niehaus said the party was disappointed, but would apply for leave to appeal.

In a later statement, it said: ”The ANC does not believe that this name should be appropriated for the exclusive use of any political party, particularly one that had no involvement in that historic event.”

‘Astounded’ at response
Cope this week said it 160 000 members in the Eastern Cape and 74 000 members in the Free State.

Lekota said he was ‘astounded at the response we got from people” and that the movement had gained a lot of members from the ANC.

‘Most people would want to thank Lekota for the boldness he had in starting the process of forming the party,” said a source in the provincial leadership of the North West.

‘He’s the first person to lay his head on the block and he knew he could be crucified for that, but he stood for what he believed in.”

Sources in the national leadership said one of the reasons for a decision to do away with elections this weekend was that people attending the conference would have no mandate to elect leaders.

‘The party must be run by members from branches who are legitimately constituted according to the constitution, and the constitution will only be adopted at the conference,” a source told the Mail & Guardian.