Paul Stober
THE ANC has launched an urgent inquiry into a power struggle between North-West premier Popo Molefe and regional agriculture minister Rocky Malebane-Metsing which has pitched the province into crisis.
ANC secretary general Cyril Rama-phosa this week sent a high-powered team to look into a war of allegations and counter-allegations that has erupted between the two most powerful politicians in the region.
A commission made up of ANC heavyweights Sister Bernard Ncube, Charles Ngqakula and Saki Macozoma was due to arrive in Mmabatho on Thursday to probe the conflict that has thrown the provincial government into turmoil. The office of Foreign Minister Thabo Mbeki has also been approached to mediate in the conflict.
Ngqakula, secretary general of the South African Communist Party, told the WM&G the commission would only get down to serious work on Monday. “The team’s job is to visit the region and receive evidence about the problems there, and to make recommendations to the ANC about how they can be solved.”
First signs of trouble emerged at a meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee meeting last week, when Molefe reported that serious divisions had opened between himself and Malebane-Metsing.
Malebane-Metsing was leader of an attempted coup against the Bophuthatswana homeland government in 1988 and fled into exile along with a number of supporters after South African Defence Force troops quashed the uprising.
At the root of the region’s troubles is conflict between two power blocs in the province: a core of “internal” ANC activists grouped around Molefe, and a group of former exiles who backed Malebane-Metsing after the attempted coup.
Sources said Malebane-Metsing was disgruntled as he believed he was the natural candidate to take over leadership of the province, which is made up of the former Bophuthat-swana and parts of the western and northern Transvaal.
Molefe, on the other hand, has been criticised by a number of ANC branches located in the former homeland and is responding to this pressure by blaming the former coup leader for orchestrating a campaign aimed at undermining his government.
This week Roger Collinson, an experienced conservationist who initiated some of Bophuthatswana’s most successful wildlife programmes, resigned. Sources say he was deeply unhappy as his department got caught up in the region’s political crossfire.
Allegations of sexual harassment lodged against the agriculture minister by an official in his office who has since resigned may also form part of the power struggle. Vuyisa Rhampele, who worked for the North-West legislature, told reporters this week she had resigned after Malebane-Metsing allegedly asked her to have a “special relationship” with him.
Molefe’s office issued a statement this week saying a government inquiry into the allegations had been launched so the premier’s office could take “informed decisions in regard to the case”.
Malebane-Metsing’s office yesterday produced a counter- statement which suggested the allegations of sexual harassment were part of a media campaign to discredit the agriculture minister ahead of the ANC’s probe.