The beleaguered Pan Africanist Congress’s national congress this weekend at Soweto’s Vista University looks set to be every bit as controversial as its postponed predecessor as dismissed members are being lobbied to stand for the party’s top posts.
Mgwebi Snail, the PAC’s secretary of education and a member of the national executive committee, and Thabo Manamela, a former secretary of the North West region, are punting a fresh slate of leadership candidates.
Among them is Wonder Masombuka, a former deputy secretary general who was expelled two years ago after allegations of financial mismanagement and who Snail and Manamela want to nominate for the post of secretary general.
”Reinstatement of Masombuka is long overdue,” says Snail. ”The PAC didn’t have a case on him. They couldn’t prove that he took money from the PAC and proper investigations were not done.”
Manamela says Masombuka could not have taken the money because the PAC had never had that kind of money.
”There’s a hangman on the loose in the PAC. One slight mistake and he chops your head off,” Snail said, referring to Lucas Molomo, head of the party’s disciplinary committee.
Snail and Manamela are also lobbying for current secretary general Thami ka Plaatjie as party president.
Matome Mashao, president of the Pan Africanist Youth Congress, is demanding that expelled Limpopo chairperson Maxwell Nemadziv-hanani be reinstated so he can stand for the party’s presidency.
Nemadzivhanani was expelled after a disciplinary committee found him guilty of having his bodyguards assault Mishack Sibuyi, secretary of the PAC’s Bushbuckridge branch in Limpopo, and of embarrassing the president and the party and bringing the party into disrepute.
Mashao says that Stanley Mogoba, the current president, will be stepping down but that his deputy, Motsoko Pheko, will run for a top job.
Mogoba said this week: ”I’m not running away from the party, I’m retiring peacefully.”