/ 17 May 2011

Rejoin the ANC? Not in my lifetime, says Shilowa

Rejoin The Anc? Not In My Lifetime

Congress of the People (Cope) co-founder Mbhazima Shilowa on Tuesday denied rumours that he was planning to leave the party and rejoin the African National Congress (ANC). “I will never, ever … go back to the African National Congress as long as I live,” he told reporters in Johannesburg on the eve of the local government elections.

This came as rumours continued to spread about his imminent defection back to the ruling party, which he left in 2008. Shilowa claimed the rumours and a South African Broadcasting Corporation news report were fuelled by Cope co-founder Mosiuoa Lekota.

“I will never abandon the people who through thick and thin stood by me. These are the people who slept outside the Heartfelt Arena without food,” he said. Cope held a second chaotic national conference at the Heartfelt Arena in Pretoria last December. Many of its members did not have accommodation and were forced to sleep in buses.

Implying that those who defected back to the ANC were attracted by financial gains, Shilowa said “no one should sell his soul for a bowl of soup”.
“When I left the ANC there were many things that were going wrong. Those things have become worse.”

He would not vote on Wednesday because the candidate list submitted by Lekota’s faction to the Independent Electoral Commission was “fraudulent”.

Not a call to boycott
This was, however, not a call for Cope supporters to boycott the election, said Shilowa.

He added that the Cope leadership aligned to him took a decision to “isolate” Lekota and that he (Shilowa) would not be casting a vote for the party that he helped form because he wanted to “teach him [Lekota] a lesson”.

“I don’t think I should perpetuate a fraud by voting Lekota’s fraudulent list which does not enjoy the support of the majority of Cope members. We must make him aware that he might be enjoying the popularity of the courts, but not of the people of Cope.”

Shilowa was a co-founder of Cope after leaving the ANC in the wake of former president Thabo Mbeki’s resignation.

He resigned as premier of Gauteng, and from the ruling party in 2008 with former ANC chairperson Lekota and deputy defence minister Mluleki George. The party has been unable to agree on leadership positions since Lekota was “appointed” president as part of the “consensus” leadership agreed upon at Cope’s inaugural conference in Bloemfontein.

Asked on clarity over his position, Shilowa said he was expelled as deputy president in February, but that a court interdict banned him from pronouncing on leadership positions. The court is expected to rule on Cope’s leadership next month.

He added that he would remain in Cope and see the leadership fights through. “When the Cope members say, ‘Mr Shilowa we don’t want you as a leader anymore’, I will leave. But Terror [Lekota] will not get me out of the Congress of the People. I am going nowhere.”