The Eastern Cape provincial executive committee (PEC) of the African National Congress will meet in Umtata on Friday to disband the leadership of the Transkei region, which has split into factions.
The groups reportedly came to blows at a recent meeting in Port St Johns.
One faction questioned why Phumulo Masualle, a member of the party’s provincial executive and the Eastern Cape’s MEC for Roads and Public Works, should oversee the leaders of the Transkei’s OR Tambo region. The faction also called for the PEC to be disbanded because it had promoted tribalism and had divided the party.
”We had a problem with Masualle because he was pushing a communist agenda within the ANC, and by this dividing the region,” said Zandise Gwele, a member of the dissident faction.
”Our problem is that the PEC does not want to convene a conference, thus not adhering to constitutional principles of the ANC … Until the PEC is disbanded, we are not going to be part of the meetings that they convene.”
Members of the faction arrived in Johannesburg on Thursday to meet national leaders about the problems. Gwele said 89 of the province’s 106 branches supported his faction.
The other faction wants to retain the provincial executive. It accuses the dissidents of bringing the provincial ANC into disrepute.
The dissident faction ”clearly does not understand how the ANC works”, said Masualle.
”The PEC agreed to go out and establish a provincial task team that will ease the tension, launch the branches, prepare for the provincial conference and explain how the entire process works. The realignment of the ANC cannot be questioned unless you are outside the party,” said Phakamisi Hobongwana, spokesperson for the ANC in the Eastern Cape.
The provincial conference will be held at the end of August. The dissidents support Mluleki George as provincial chairperson; the other faction supports Premier Makhenkesi Stofile.
Nkosinathi Kuluta, a leader of the other faction, said: ”There is a small faction of individuals in the [regional executive] who support George to take over the leadership of the province and the region does not endorse that.
”A mob of angry so-called ANC members stormed the boardroom [at the Port St Johns meeting], climbed on the table and chanted anti-ANC leadership slogans, anti-provincial government slogans and pro-George slogans. [They] dragged the name and good reputation of the ANC down the drain in the OR Tambo region.”
Gwele denied the claim. ”It is a lie, a fallacy, that we chanted anti-ANC leadership and provincial government slogans and pro-George slogans. We went to that meeting to present our petition [from] the branches that the PEC should be disbanded as it was dividing the branches and perpetuating tribalism in the party. The person they claim we assaulted in our meeting, Siyakholwa Mlamli, … was sent by the PEC to create factionalism in the region.”