There is widespread support for Bantu Holomisa to become leader of the MDM, but for now he’s still trying to stay an ANC member. Gaye Davis and Joshua Amupadhi report
DISAFFECTED African National Congress members want Bantu Holomisa to lead the so- called Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), under whose banner he has been speaking at rallies drawing thousands of people.
But Holomisa said:”If the people in the MDM want to launch it as an independent movement I can’t stop them. But the question of my leading the MDM at this point, I can’t accept right now. I am focusing on my court case to fight for the restoration of my ANC membership.”
During the late Eighties and early Nineties the MDM comprised a broad anti-apartheid front of organisations and individuals allied with the ANC. Since Holomisa’s axing as deputy minister of environment affairs and his expulsion as an ANC member, his supporters – mostly disaffected ANC members – have used the name to organise rallies in his support.
Holomisa said organisers used the name because of ANC strictures against its members who invited him to speak at rallies organised in the name of the ANC, its alliance partner the South African Communist Party or the South African National Civics Organisation.
He will be addressing another MDM-organised rally at Rustenburg this weekend. A crowd of about 10 000 flocked to hear him speak at an MDM rally at Orlando Stadium in Soweto last Saturday, many dressed in traditional Xhosa garb and bearing knobkieries, pangas, assegais and sticks. One placard read “Holomisa for President in 1999”.
Holomisa used the opportunity to urge rallygoers to “revive ANC branches”. One woman, who said she was employed by the Gauteng provincial government, said: “General Holomisa must stop telling us to revive ANC branches. Then we can show our support openly. For example, I don’t want to be expelled by my branch here in Soweto and end up with nowhere to go. If Holomisa was leading the MDM I would openly stand by him.”
A member of the ANC Women’s League said: “Even we with no real influence in the party are scared to oppose the ANC openly. But I think it is only a matter of time. Holomisa must form his party so that we can fight this corruption.”
A squatter from Alexandra township said: “We are prepared to support General Holomisa if he forms his own party. He is the only one who can deliver us from the squatter camp.”
One of the organisers of Saturday’s rally was Weston Shabangu, an executive member of the Orlando West branch of the ANC, which also happens to be ANC veteran Walter Sisulu’s local branch. Shabangu told the Mail & Guardian: “It is a pity that the party we so loved, we are now fearing. To me it is frightening how people are muzzled, they can’t talk or contribute … they are scared to do anything. We, the people on the ground, are not happy.
“Now we (the MDM) are mobilising our people to say to the ANC leadership how we feel. We gave them too much power and it has made them drunk. The people feel that the government has become arrogant.”
Shabangu said it was “only a matter of time” before the MDM was formally launched in Gauteng. A structure in the Eastern Cape has already been set up, according to Mabandla Gogo, organiser of an ANC branch in Umtata.
“There are individuals in the ANC who feel they own the organisation, forgetting that it is a grassroots organisation,” he said. It is understood that MDM supporters in the Eastern Cape include members of the Pan Africanist Congress, church groups and civil servants resentful of the former Ciskei’s Bisho, rather than the former Transkei’s Umtata, becoming the Eastern Cape capital and who support the notion of what was once Transkei forming a 10th province.
The base strategy appears to be to use the MDM as a pressure group, to mobilise disaffected ANC members who feel alienated from the organisation and see Holomisa as a champion of their cause. Should the judicial review of his expulsion which he intends seeking in the Rand Supreme Court fail, he could find himself with a platform ready to climb aboard.
He was discounting such suggestions this week, however, and Shabangu and Gogo were not saying whether they were putting pressure on him to assume leadership of the MDM.
“It is a movement, not a political party, made up as I see it of ANC members who do not want to be seen to be defying the organisation,” Holomisa said. “It might be gaining momentum – if the feeling is strong it can express the views of the people. If they want me to lead it, they have not yet approached me.”
He said he still saw himself as an ANC member. “The people who chased me away were not the ANC, only a few leaders,” he said. If his court action failed, he would re- apply for ANC membership. If that was rejected, he would make a direct appeal at the ANC’s national congress at the end of next year. “When I have exhausted all avenues then I will see what I can do,” he said.
“At the moment there is nothing attracting me to establish a new party or lead a new movement.”