/ 30 October 2009

Skwatsha denies ‘treasonous’ leak

African National Congress (ANC) Western Cape legislature member Mcebisi Skwatsha has described claims by Premier Helen Zille that he leaked information to the Democratic Alliance (DA) as tantamount to ”accusing [him] of treason”.

Zille dropped a bombshell in the provincial legislature last week when she said Skwatsha and ANC chief whip Max Ozinsky had provided the DA with information on a social transformation project started by former premier Ebrahim Rasool.

In the legislature, Ozinsky had asked Zille whether the DA’s attacks on the project were just politicking.

”I don’t recall attacking any particular programme,” Zille was quoted as saying. ”What I do recall is Ozinsky and Skwatsha accusing Rasool of using the programme to build a base for the Rasool faction of the ANC using taxpayers’ money.

”You can be sure that the analysis on which [Robin] Carlisle or any member of the DA attacked the programme was based on information given to them by Ozinsky and Skwatsha.”

Skwatsha and Ozinsky were involved in a bitter power struggle with loyalists aligned to Rasool, who was sacked by the ANC last July.

Despite what he sees as the ”ongoing onslaught” against him, Skwatsha said this week he was still on his feet.

”I know I am an innocent man. I have served the ANC honestly, as a disciplined member,” he said. ”I will never be an agent of anybody, more especially the DA. Such an accusation against me is like treason. I sleep with a clear conscience.”

Skwatsha said he would welcome an ANC investigation of the accusations and a probe by a special ad hoc committee set up by the legislature to examine them.

”Unfortunately, a number of people in the ANC have got on the bandwagon,” he said. ”I know that a campaign to vilify me in the past is still continuing, and the test of time will prove I am innocent of all these accusations.”

The leader of the opposition in the Western Cape, ANC national executive committee member Lynne Brown, said the party had moved beyond the divisions of the past. Zille, she claimed, wanted to ”rekindle these divisions”.

Zille said she could not answer questions from the Mail & Guardian as she was preparing a substantial document to present to the ad hoc committee when it sits.

Brown told the M&G the factionalism in the ANC in the province was manufactured for political gain and power.

”Factionalism takes place when there is a vacuum of leadership, or when there is a fight for leadership,” said Brown. ”So in the fight for leadership, you will have people caucusing the different people in leadership positions.”

A provisional date for the ANC’s Western Cape’s provincial conference, which will elect leaders, has now been set for April 2 to 4 next year.

Brown said the ANC had lost the trust of the coloured community in the province and was working hard to win voters. ”The results from [the] 1994 elections show that we made inroads into rural coloured areas and African working-class areas. We’ve never really had a constituency of coloured people in our fold,” she said.

”I think it’s more than just the ANC being out of touch with coloured people. I think it is race identity, and broadly we call that the ‘national question’.”

Brown has been accused of being an ”Africanist” because of her loyalty to Skwatsha, whom she said she would ”certainly not be dropping”.

”I don’t know what an Africanist is, but I hope I am not a nationalist of any sort,” said Brown. ”I hope I’m viewed as somebody who is a humanitarian and a humanist, and who believes that the Western Cape belongs to all who live in it.

”I believe the Africanist label is a construct to create a division in the ANC in the Western Cape.”

President Jacob Zuma returns to the province this weekend to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Mitchells Plain, the huge, mainly coloured township on the Cape Flats.

Some party members hope Zuma will not repeat his recent address to the ANC’s provincial general council in Cape Town at which he lambasted party members, saying they were expected to provide solutions to problems. Many were only worried about next year’s provincial conference, he said.

Shaun Byneveld, coordinator of the ANC’s provincial task team, said Zuma had merely been giving a ”frank assessment”.

Ozinsky declined to comment on the leak controversy.