Bongani Majola
In a document entitled Is the Revolution Safe in Your Hands? the African National Congress Youth League has fiercely attacked the party’s Mpumulanga leadership and the national ANC’s management of party affairs in the province.
The document, penned on the eve of the Mpumalanga provincial congress, is a clear attempt to assert the independence and activist character of the league.
It is highly critical of the ANC leadership’s failure to disband the provincial executive last year in contrast with Gauteng, the Free State and the Northern Province and attacks the separation of the positions of provincial premier and provincial ANC chairperson.
It also lashes out at the provincial women’s league, calling it “a toothless body” that “constitutes another serious threat to the intervention and provincial project of redirecting the ANC”.
In March last year the “Middelburg tribunal”, led by national executive committee (NEC) member Steve Tshwete, recommended certain redeployments in the province but did not dissolve the provincial executive committee (PEC).
The Mpumalanga PEC has been plagued by faction fighting and claims of corruption. The ANC’s NEC has twice intervened in the province, on the first occasion replacing former premier Matthews Phosa with Ndaweni Mahlangu.
In a statement on the second intervention in June last year, the party’s national executive said it had chosen to “strengthen the PEC by adding senior members of the NEC”, including Tshwete and Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza. This “was against the ANC constitution and best practices”.
The document says “the NEC neither took the Youth League nor the Women’s League into its confidence”.
The youth league argues that “the PEC should have been disbanded” and that it was spared dissolution “due to some governance and political consideration that the NEC did not want to disclose”.
The document says most members of the current provincial leadership are “accident candidates … parachuted into the PEC … [They] committed numerous mistakes and a plethora of problems, and in this regard the revolution is not safe in their hands.”
It calls for the replacement of all existing members of the PEC.
“Current MECs and the premier should not panic if they are not retained, as their appointment is the competency of the premier and the president respectively (anyway they sit in the PEC because of their positions).”
The document further accuses the Mpumalanga Women’s League of playing a “destructive role in cementing and consolidating blocks and factionalism in the ANC”.
“Ours is a Women’s League that concerns itself with representation and quotas in the legislature and in municipal councils,” the document says.
On factionalism ahead of the provincial congress, the document says “all those squaring for positions are either MECs or MPLs who seek to position themselves in the organisation strategically in pursuit of their agendas. They do not imagine any other member being a PEC unless he is an MEC, MP or MPL.”
According to ANC sources, three camps are vying for positions in the PEC next month, led by MPL Fish Mahlalela, Mahlangu and speaker William Lubisi.
Lubisi is seen as a front for Phosa. Thabang Makwetla, a recent deployee from Parliament often described as the party leadership’s favoured candidate for provincial ANC chairperson, is believed to be in Mahlangu’s camp.