Rehana Rossouw
DEPUTY Environment Affairs and Tourism Minister Peter Mokaba’s bid for the leadership of the African National Congress in the Northern Province will be discussed by a high-level ANC National Executive Committee delegation (NEC) to the province this weekend.
This week Mokaba confirmed that he was available for the position of ANC Northern Province chair and would challenge the incumbent, Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi.
Mokaba has been nominated by the Northern Province ANC Youth League (ANCYL), which is lobbying the ANC NEC to make him available to stand for the election at the provincial conference starting on Thursday.
Mokaba is a member of an NEC subcommittee established to assist the Northern Province. Other members who will travel there this weekend to discuss conference issues are Sydney Mufamadi, Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini and Charles Nqakula.
ANCYL chair Joe Maswanganyi said Mokaba’s name had been forwarded for nomination by its regional structures. He would not be drawn on why the league was not backing Ramatlhodi’s re-election bid, but said it had no “political problems” with the premier.
He said the ANCYL did not believe an opportunity would be created for a power struggle if the ANC chairman and the premier were not the same person.
“We will finalise our nominations for the provincial executive committee this weekend at a Youth League conference and after a meeting between NEC members and ourselves,” Maswanganyi said.
ANC Northern Province representative Ian Madikoto said the organisation was concerned about a possible power struggle if the positions of premier and ANC chair were held by separate people, but was reassured by a statement Mokaba had made saying he would not come to the province if it meant the ANC would be divided.
“A separate person in the ANC chair and premier will pave the way for power blocs to emerge.”
Madikoto said the ANC and Ramatlhodi upheld the right of any person to contest any position in the organisation: “The premier does not own the position, and he is not going to contest the position on the pages of newspapers. At conference the Youth League only commands 10% of the votes, so we cannot understand why so much weight is attached to their candidates.
“Since our last elections we have had to function with an absentee secretary which has had a devastating effect on the organisation. There is nothing about the position of chairperson which lends itself to such a power struggle as we are now seeing.
“But what we have learnt in recent weeks is that a handful of people can create a big noise.”
Northern Province MEC for Transport, Freedom Front member Johan Kriek, said his experience of Ramatlhodi was that “he is an intelligent person capable of providing excellent leadership for this province. Perhaps he is too much of a moderate and that is why people want to replace him.”
Kriek said he was perturbed about who the “someone else” was. He said his only recollection of Mokaba was that he was the prime source of the “kill the farmer, kill the boer” slogan.
“Perhaps he has changed, perhaps he hasn’t shouted that slogan for years. One cannot say that a person who was a radical before 1994 is still a radical, but that is how I remember him.
“What concerns me more than whether the new chair is a radical or a moderate is the threat this poses for division. While it is not my place to interfere in ANC affairs, I certainly don’t want to see a similar position to what happened in the Free State where the ruling party was deeply divided.
“The Freedom Front is not interested in taking control of the Northern Province government, we just want things to work smoothly, and right now they are.”
Kriek said while there was corruption in the province, it was not crippling the government and was certainly not Ramatlhodi’s creation.