Neglected: KwaZulu-Natal ANC branches say national leaders are fighting factional battles with the likes of Supra Mahumapelo (above) and not on their battles. Photo: Felix Dlangamandla/Gallo Images/ Netwerk 24/Beeld
ANC branches in the party’s Lower South Coast region of KwaZulu-Natal have warned that the interim regional task team will be the party’s biggest stumbling block in its efforts to successfully contest the local government elections in October.
In May, the party’s national executive committee (NEC) instructed branches to finalise the nomination of ward candidates before June 13. Each branch was tasked with selecting four candidates to go through a cycle of vetting by citizens before its list was submitted to the provincial executive committee (PEC).
In the Lower South Coast region, one of the ANC’s biggest in KwaZulu-Natal, some branches say the national leadership is fighting factional battles with individuals such as suspended secretary general Ace Magashule and former North West chairperson Supra Mahumapelo, which has led to the neglect of branches dealing with a task team that has overstayed its terms.
The Lower South Coast region last went to a regional conference in 2014 because of deep seated factionalism — in 2017 the branches were divided between Cyril Ramaphosa supporters and those backing Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
The PEC elected to set up a Lower South Coast regional task team (RTT) in 2018 to quell the factions and ready the region for its conference, but some regional leaders have said this instead added fuel to fire.
In a letter to Luthuli House and the KwaZulu-Natal provincial leadership, branches said this decision reflected minimal understanding of the Lower South Coast region.
The branches said that instead of building the movement, its regional task team had legitimised factions.
“The impact of the decision is still felt [because] factions are more prevalent than the organisation. The decision absconded from the values and principles that [have been a pillar of] the ANC for decades and created everything that is contrary to the ANC and what the ANC stands for,” one branch leader said.
“Lower South Coast is one of the regions where the opposition is weak, but it thrives through the weaknesses of the African National Congress, which is characterised by institutionalised factions, patronage, weaker branches and a dysfunctional and divided regional task team.
“It is unfortunate that we, as branches, must now attribute this to the manner in which the regional task team of Lower South Coast was formed. If the PEC was well acquainted with these realities on the ground, it would be aware of this basic fact: that the Lower South Coast has been deeply divided into four groupings or factions towards and after the national conference at Nasrec [in 2017].
“This is not raised to offend leadership but to bring to the attention of leadership to what may have been an error of judgment in dealing with a very important matter of appointing a regional task team,” the branch leader said.
In the letter, signed by more than 100 branch secretaries and chairpersons, which was sent to the ANC’s national dispute committee, the branches complained that while the lifespan of a task team is normally six months, the term of Lower South Coast regional task team had been renewed by the KwaZulu-Natal PEC and it had “outgrown” its third term in office.
“We believe it is in the interest of the organisation for the leadership to reconstitute the RTT and put in a team that will fairly lead the processes towards the ANC seventh regional conference. Leadership must remember that the ANC does not only exist to serve and lead its members, but society in general,” reads the letter.
In its findings, the ANC’s national dispute committee conceded that political problems in the Lower South Coast region needed to be attended to, but it justified the continued existence of the regional task team, saying that it had been functioning as intended.
Branches then appealed to the ANC’s national dispute appeals committee, raising concerns that their grievances had been trivialised in an attempt to defend the ineptitude, factional and divisive actions of both the task team and the office of provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli.
The branches added that the national dispute committee findings and recommendations were made in haste and under pressure.
They said the ANC had failed to address issues in most regions and provinces before heading into the local government campaign season.
“This will inevitably result in the party attempting to put out fires with petrol,” another branch leader said.
At least 12 branch leaders from the Lower South Coast agreed that the ANC is not ready to start its ward council selection before it addresses its deepening factional realities.
A selection of council candidates before this will result in an “all-out war”, they said.
The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal has previously faced such challenges. Two months before the August 2016 election, 12 ANC councillors or nominees were killed because tensions over council seats were exacerbated by the contested result of the November 2015 provincial conference. The killings escalated after the elections.
Willies Mchunu, the premier at the time, then appointed a commission, chaired by Marumo Moerane SC, to investigate the causes of political violence in the province. The 424-page Moerane Commission report recommended, among other things, an end to political deployments for councillor posts, which has played a role in decreasing potential political tensions ahead of the 2021 local government elections.
Ntuli said the violence rising from the selection of ANC councillors was a concern, and added that the provincial leadership would have a sense by the end of May which areas were threatened by such tensions.
“The ANC agreed in the last conference that we must renew the organisation, which among other things, means that we must do away with the practices that are at the detriment of the ANC. It’s a huge task because the number of people who have joined the ANC for reasons other than what the ANC stands for have increased over a period of time,” said Ntuli.
“What we are now doing to mitigate its impact is that as we do these biannual branch general meeting that are sitting for conferences, we also have a team of PEC members that have been assigned to listen to every dispute arising from the process, and to [provide] a solution guided by the ANC’s constitution and our own guidelines for the selection process,” he said. “[T]he biggest task for the ANC is to change the complexion of each membership in terms of its orientation, its values, its commitment to the cause of our people.”
Another branch secretary said: “We have been so disciplined because we actually understand the organisation and we respect the ANC, but these things will end up getting us into a space we don’t want to go and we don’t want to see this happening in the ANC.”
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