With the National Working Committee stepping in to take control of the Free State, Terror Lekota has been given a second chance to be a premier, reports Gaye Davis
FREE STATE Premier Terror Lekota has been thrown a lifeline by the African National Congress national leadership’s dramatic intervention in the faction-torn region – but to return as premier he will have to win a decisive victory at his party’s provincial congress leadership elections.
The decision by the ANC’s National Working Committee (NWC) – agreed to by all the players this week – that Lekota and his provincial executive stand down and that the 43 member provincial executive committee also resign in favour of a caretaker committee effectively defuses the power struggle between Lekota and a faction led by ANC Free State chair Pat Matosa. Their battle was threatening to paralyse the government in the region.
While the national ANC leadership has been criticised by opposition parties for meddling in provincial affairs, it clearly had little choice but to act in a situation where both sides conceded they had broken the terms of an agreement brokered by President Nelson Mandela earlier in a bid to resolve the impasse.
Although the NWC decision gives the crucial impression of a national leadership acting with an even hand, it in fact opens the way for Lekota’s return to power as premier – this time with the vote of confidence he needs from party structures.
Lekota’s problem has been that while he commands popular support, chiefly in the southern part of the region, though also increasingly in the north as a result of his high-profile crusade against corruption, he has lacked control over the party machinery.
Deployed to the region by the national leadership, Lekota was seen by local ANC leaders as an outsider and a threat. In 1994 he lost the vote for leader of the ANC to Pat Matosa; subsequent bids by him to secure a place in the provincial executive failed.
While his rivals turned the party machinery against him, he also stands accused of using his position against his enemies – to the detriment of the ANC, the provincial government and the people of the region.
The NWC’s decision – to be ratified by the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) this weekend – helps Lekota in several ways. Disciplinary proceedings against him in the wake of comments he made attacking Free State ANC leaders on a radio broadcast have been halted, while investigations into allegations of fraud and corruption involving certain MECs will continue. (Lekota is being sued for R300 000 damages by Godfrey Mayekiso, brother of sacked Housing MEC Vax Mayekiso, for allegedly defaming him during a radio broadcast.)
An NWC task group will oversee an interim committee that will run the ANC in the province and prepare for the congress, which it is expected will be postponed from December until February. Special rules will be drawn up to help ensure the elections are substantially free and fair.
It is hoped this will break the hold Lekota’s rivals have on the party machinery. The expectations are that Lekota will be able to secure his election as provincial leader of the party.
It will then be for congress delegates to decide whether or not the positions of party provincial chair and premier should be unified, as they are in most other ANC-held provinces. If so agreed, the caretaker premier would stand down in favour of Lekota who would then form a new executive.
“At national level people are trying to do what they can to help him while at the same time appearing to be even-handed,” said a source.
ANC membership in the region has plummeted, contrary to what one would expect in the run-up to a party conference. Lekota’s supporters have accused the party leadership of withholding membership cards from new recruits so as to influence the outcome of the vote.
ANC chair Jacob Zuma will lead a national leadership delegation to Welkom on Sunday to brief a Free State provincial general council meeting fully aware of the decision and its implications.
The meeting will be guided on who will be eligible for election to replace Lekota and members of his provincial executive.
While Lekota’s supporters were this week optimistic Lekota would be able immediately to stand for the position, NWC sources told the Mail & Guardian none of the players contaminated by the region’s two-year power struggle would be eligible for the interim leadership positions.
The names of two national assembly MPs were this week being mooted as possible replacements for Lekota as caretaker premier. They are Sekhopi Malebo, who shares a United Democratic Front background with Lekota and was the first chairperson of the ANC in the Southern Free State region and Zingile Dingani, who took over from Gill Marcus as chair of Parliament’s joint standing committee on finance, a former deputy chair of the southern Free State region. They would first have to become members of the provincial legislature but it is understood there are mechanisms to achieve this.
It was stressed, however, that a new premier and replacements for all or some of the 10 ANC members of Lekota’s provincial executive would serve for an interim period only.
Key players were this week heeding an injunction by the NWC that they refrain from making press statements. Sources close to the Matosa faction were, however, insisting that Lekota was not as clean as he was projecting himself to be in his anti- corruption crusade.