Gaye Davis
FINALITY on Bantu Holomisa’s status as an African National Congress (ANC) member could be reached as early as next week. The ANC National Executive Committee (NEC), which must hear Holomisa’s appeal against his expulsion by a disciplinary committee, is scheduled to meet following the Constitutional Court’s judgment on Friday on the new Constitution. If the text is referred back to the Constitutional Assembly for amendment, as it is expected it will be, the NEC will have to give its ANC negotiators a fresh mandate.
It is understood that Holomisa’s appeal will be dealt with at the same time, as ANC leaders want to conclude the matter as soon as possible.
The ANC is also now moving to brief members at branch level to dispel perceptions that Holomisa is being made a scapegoat. The Gauteng region of the ANC has called a meeting of the chairpersons and secretaries of its branches alliance partners the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Cosatu and the South African National Civic Organisation.
There are concerns within the ANC that branch leadership, left out of the information loop and under pressure from grassroots members unhappy with the action against Holomisa, could act out of line.
The move follows a protest by Soweto ANC members outside Shell House last Friday when Holomisa arrived for his disciplinary hearing, and his invitation, in contravention of ANC instructions, to speak at a rally in Thokoza on Sunday. This week the ANC Youth League, the ANC branch in Thokoza and the SACP all scurried to disassociate themselves from staging the rally or inviting Holomisa to speak.
But there are fears within the organisation that one section of the alliance could be used against the other: ground-level leaders often wear more than one hat, and the Thokoza rally’s ANC organisers are understood to have defended themselves by saying it took place under SACP auspices.
Gauteng ANC provincial secretary Paul Matshatile said Monday night’s meeting would be addressed by Gauteng premier and ANC provincial chair, Tokyo Sexwale. ”When people are not briefed it is easy for them to formulate the opinion that someone has been victimised,” he said. ”It is important we have this meeting so that the leadership can explain to the people, who only know what they have been reading in the newspapers.”
While regional leadership has been kept informed about the reasons for Holomisa’s disciplinary action, this has not filtered through adequately to ground level. Talk on buses, trains and taxis is no accurate measure of the true facts of a matter, but can indicate the depth of people’s understanding and their mood.
While debate is fierce, many people feel they have lost, in Holomisa, a politician in touch with and able to articulate their concerns in a new political paradigm that has seen a gulf open between people and party, and party and government.
A letter written to the ANC’s parliamentary caucus by an active Guguletu ANC member this week spoke for many: writing as a ”loyal and disciplined member” of the ANC, Theo Nkohla said he was disturbed by developments taking place in his organisation. No explanation was given to structures when Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was dismissed as deputy minister; now Holomisa had been expelled.
”We only hear from the media, who give us their own version. Is the ANC now elected by the media?” He and others were left to speculate that ”the only sin” Holomisa committed was ”to speak the truth” before the truth commission ”but for him it was a death sentence”.
Holomisa retains his seat as an MP but has officially been expelled as a member of the party. The ANC will inform Parliament of his expulsion only once it has been upheld by the NEC, however, as the interim Constitution which says an expelled member of a party must lose his seat has no mechanism for reinstating a member once his seat has been vacated.
This clarification came on Tuesday, after disciplinary committee chair, Public Service and Administration Minister Zola Skweyiya announced that Holomisa would not be allowed to take up his seat. Only hours after the release of the statement, however, ANC chief whip the Rev Arnold Stofile said Holomisa’s expulsion as an ANC member was also on hold pending his appeal. This is not the case.