No action has been taken against party members accused of factionalism
Jaspreet Kindra
The African National Congress’s Gauteng interim leadership core, which replaced the party’s faction-ridden leadership structures last year, has failed to take action against senior party members allegedly responsible for friction in the province.
This claim is detailed in reports drafted since 1999 which says “perpetrators of factionalism” in Gauteng are positioning themselves again for elections to leadership positions at the ANC’s provincial conference next month.
Three of the reports are from the former Tembisa West branch, now part of the Greater East Rand Metro Council, and have been submitted to the ANC’s national leadership.
The reports claim that Isaac Mahlangu and Sicelo Shiceka, the former Khayalami regional executive committee chairman and deputy chairman respectively, were “spearheading division”.
The reports were submitted to interim leadership and the ANC’s national working committee. The former Tembisa West branch fell under the aegis of the former Khayalami executive committee.
The report cited Mahlangu’s public opposition of the party’s decision taken at the national executive committee and the demarcation board to include Midrand as part of Greater Johannesburg, when new municipal boundaries were drawn up last year.
“This brazen defiance” has gone unpunished, it says. Mahlangu was mayor of the Khayalami metro, which fell under Midrand at the time.
The infighting, which saw councillors in the region divided according to whether they supported Mahlangu or Shiceka, became so heated that former president Nelson Mandela was called to settle the dispute in 1999.
Mahlangu, who is now a ward councillor in Tembisa and the chair of the Gauteng Tourism Authority, admitted there had been numerous conflicts, but said they were all in the past.
He said: “The Khayalami region has been disbanded, new structures have been put into place. I am no longer a part of the regional structure and I am merely a councillor.”
Mahlangu said that he was not in a position to influence anyone.
One of the documents claims that the “faction” has become active again and managed to place two of its members in the new Johannesburg ANC regional executive committee last month.
For any faction to take on Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, who seems to be the ANC national leadership’s sanctioned candidate for provincial chairman, it would have to win at least three of the five regions.
The five ANC regions are Greater Johannesburg, Greater East Rand, Pretoria, West Rand and Vaal.
The East Rand region is expected to have its election for a regional executive committee in the next two weeks. One of the reports claims that the faction is taking advantage of mayor Bavumile Vilakazi’s “embarrassing blunders” like buying an expensive car and spending hundreds of thousands of rands on his inauguration parties.
One of the reports says that to counter factionalism in the Gauteng ANC the party’s national leadership has advised MEC for Housing Paul Mashatile not to stand against Shilowa for the position of ANC chair.
One of the documents claims that ANC national executive committee member Nosiviwe Maphisa Nqakula, who was deployed to Gauteng last year to lead the interim leadership core politically, did not act upon a report given to the national working committee that identified “dissident” senior ANC members.
Nqakula dismissed the reports as “rubbish” concocted by the Mail & Guardian. She said the newspaper was contacting her for comment merely to try to “legitimise” the reports. She said that “they” were watching this reporter.
One of the reports says that Nqakula’s failure to act in Gauteng “was in contrast to the swift and effective commission she led in Mpumalanga which saw Mathews Phosa ousted because of his alleged autocratic abuse of power”.
David Makhura, coordinator of the interim leadership core, said the issues in the reports were raised by ANC structures that were no longer in existence.
According to one of the reports, titled In Defence of the Congress Tradition, submitted to the ANC’s national working committee in June last year after the establishment of interim leadership, the relationship between branches and MPs and MPLs is limited to “extremely minimal contact”.
The issue of ineffective contact was raised again during last year’s munici-pal elections by branches in the East Rand.
The Tembisa West branch document, which was also submitted to the interim leadership last year, says the problems in the province “started with the announcement of the Gauteng cabinet, which the [former Khaya-lami] regional executive derisively called the ‘Shilowa cabinet'”.
“According to the regional executive committee the region was supposed to be galvanised into active opposition of the cabinet because, according to the logic of Shiceka, it was not unifying the province. We still need to know whether the ANC unity is based on satisfaction of egocentric needs of comrades such as Shiceka,” the document said. Shiceka had not responded to several requests for comment by the time of going to press.
One of the documents claims that after the reports were submitted to the ANC’s national and regional leadership, councillors for the Tembisa branch were “victimised” and removed from their positions on charges of corruption. An audit report from Gobodo Forensic Auditors commissioned by the Edenvale council, where the councillors were employed, shows the three of them were exonerated early last year. But they were kept off last year’s election list, claims one of the documents.
Meanwhile, former Gauteng premier and ANC provincial chairman Mathole Motshekga denied he was making a bid for any position next month.
“It would be a demotion,” said the former politician, who returned to his law practice and academia following a bruising political battle in the Gauteng ANC two years ago.