The ANC Women’s League president has said she is ready to continue leading the organisation when party officials left the matter of her stepping aside to the national working committee.
ANC top officials have kicked the Bathabile Dlamini can further down the road, focusing instead on newly elected Mpumalanga provincial treasurer Mandla Msibi in this week’s meeting.
A meeting of top ANC officials on Monday was expected to discuss Dlamini’s resignation from the party following her conviction and sentencing on perjury charges last month.
The officials are said to have only discussed Msibi, who was asked to step aside on Monday because of his double murder arrest last year.
ANC treasurer general Paul Mashatile confirmed that the ANC officials did not discuss Dlamini and will instead raise the matter next week, when the party national working committee meets.
Dlamini, the former minister of social development, was found guilty of perjury in March for lying under oath during an inquiry about her role in the 2018 South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) grant payments debacle.
Judge Betty Khumalo handed down a four-year prison sentence or the option of the fine, which included two years suspended or a R100 000 fine.
Insiders said Dlamini was willing to fight against any order made by the officials should it come, but they said it was unlikely that she would be asked to resign.
“The ANC says you must step aside if it’s a serious crime and if you have paid a fine there is no need to step aside. If you remember the mayor of Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal, Dr Ntuthuko Mahlaba, did not step aside because he paid a fine,” one insider said.
The insider said that there was “no way” that the ANC would ask Dlamini to step aside.
In the letter Mashatile wrote to Msibi calling him to step aside on Monday, he said the national executive committee had reaffirmed the resolution of the 54th National Conference that all members who have been charged with corruption or other serious crimes must step aside, failing which they should be suspended in terms of Rule 25.70 of the ANC’s constitution.
In an interview with Dlamini on Thursday, a day before her sentencing, the women’s league president told the M&G she would be available to lead the structure.
“If I’m asked I am available. But I am not going to push myself and say to women, please elect me. I am not going to do that because being a leader is a lot of work,” she said.
The women’s league narrowly escaped being disbanded during an ANC national working committee (NWC) meeting on 28 February. Instead, the NWC proposed that Thandi Modise head a panel to evaluate the status of the women’s league ahead of its elective conference expected to take place later this year.
The women’s league last held a conference in 2015, where Dlamini was elected president.
The disbandment of the league to install a national task team was fiercely debated during the NWC meeting, where Dlamini’s camp trashed the proposal, claiming that it was fuelled by patriarchy.
During that meeting, the women’s league secretary general, Meokgo Matuba, made it clear that there were challenges in almost all of its provinces.
Dlamini was responsible for mobilising the league to support Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (NDZ) in 2017. Dlamini-Zuma lost her bid for ANC president to Cyril Ramaphosa.
In the interview with the M&G, Dlamini said she would hold her cards close to her chest on who she would endorse for this year’s elective conference in December but added that she still believed a woman should ascend to the top position.
She said the biggest mistake at the 2017 Nasrec elective conference was showing their hand to lobbyists too early.
She blamed her early endorsement of Dlamini-Zuma and other women leaders as having led to campaigns to destroy them publicly.
Dlamini also believed that her problems with the law started when she became vocal about who should lead the ANC prior to the Nasrec conference.
“I said to comrades, let’s have a meeting of all women in ANC and agree on who should lead us and then we will all move forward and we will support those proposed. This is where my problems started. I said we must do that because of past experience.
“In Mafikeng we turned against Winnie [Madikizela-Mandela] and women were used to turn against women. In Polokwane we said officials are not a structure so you don’t need zebra [during Jacob Zuma’s tenure there was a “zebra” principle to ensure 50/50 leadership participation]. In Nasrec we took a decision to support NDZ, Jessie Duarte and Maite [Nkoana-Mashabane] and we never went out to talk to other structures.”
Dlamini added that the women they failed to speak to found expression of their issues in the male-dominated caucuses. This has been a lesson for her.
Again she lamented the “push back by patriarchy” saying that although women do not have the financial backing, they are strong in mobilisation and community work.
“We still need a woman president and three officials because this is where many decisions are taken,” she said.
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