The seemingly unending race for the much contested presidency of the beleaguered Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) has taken yet another twist.
So far four candidates — president Stanley Mogoba, deputy Motsoko Pheko, secretary general Thami ka Plaatjie and Maxwell Nemadzhiv-hanani — have refused to step down and limit the candidates to two.
And now it has emerged that there is a fifth candidate preparing to stake a claim on the leadership.
All will become clear when the PAC holds its congress at Vista University in Soweto next weekend.
Last December’s congress in Umtata was embarrassingly called off after questions were raised about apparently under-age delegates.
The PAC has been struggling to pull itself from a mire of disorganisation following the departure of popular MP and party stalwart Patricia de Lille to form the Independent Democrats. The move reduced the PAC’s representation in Parliament to two delegates.
Rumours abound that the new contender for the party’s presidency is Raymond Fihla, who was a former NIA operative and member of the PAC’s armed wing Apla, and who now works for a mining company.
Although he has only hinted at contesting, party members are already questioning his candidature.
PAC national organiser Themba Godi could not confirm Fihla’s position. ”We can’t really know because the nominations are only made at the congress itself,” he said.
Godi was confident that not all leadership contestants would stand for election and added that the party had introduced measures to ensure that the Umtata problems were not repeated at the upcoming congress.
”We have already registered all delegates and branches and no one will attend the congress unless they are registered,” Godi said.
In the meantime, Mogoba and Pheko appear to be preparing to support each other at the congress. This has resulted in Nemadzhiv-hanani seeking an alliance with Ka Plaatjie’s block. However, he is unlikely to gain any support after a disciplinary committee found him guilty of bringing the party into disrepute because of comments he made to the media.
Amid the jostling for position, there are fears that the leadership elections will again be delayed.
But Ka Plaatjie said the congress will have to complete all of its business so that the party can prepare for next year’s national and provincial elections.