The National Land Committee (NLC) is still in one piece following a vote last week to decide whether its national office should be dissolved, but it is riven by ideological battles.
In a show of solidarity with opponents who claim that the NLC has ”become less rooted in community experience and increasingly concerned … with ideological positioning”, three affiliates have left its ranks.
Now racial mud-slinging and rumours are rife among some members of the NLC, who told the Mail & Guardian they believe this fiasco is part of a greater plan by the African National Congress to rein in the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) before the national elections next year. The LPM has close links with the NLC. An internal document written by an NLC member and submitted to the board outlines the reasons for the call to dissolve the national office and says that ”the network has been weak as an advocacy body for some time.
”However, the current crisis has developed in such a way that the [internal] differences have been given new layers and interpretations.
”For example, mysterious third forces have been identified, ideological pigeon-holing is rife, and the race card has not only been brought out, it is being played with abandon.”
Ashley Westaway, director of the Border Rural Committee and one of the disaffiliated NLC members, told the M&G that internal strife and ”analytical and strategic differences in how to approach land and agrarian studies”, left him with little choice but to leave the beleaguered organisation.
He said fears that the government is working in ”back rooms” to quash the movement have no foundation.
”I think the people who may be putting these claims forward are overestimating our own importance.” The two other disaffiliated members are the Association for Community and Rural Advancement in the Northern Cape and Rural Action Committee in the North West.
The vote for the dissolution of the NLC followed the dismissal of former director Zakes Hlatshwayo in July. The M&G reported at the time that he was dismissed on sketchy charges including insubordination, financial mismanagement and misrepresentation. Two weeks ago the M&G reported that the relationship between the national office and the board had disintegrated. The root of this distrust was linked to an attempt by LPM members to counteract the decision to dismiss Hlatshwayo.
According to activists, perceptions that the ANC is trying to nullify the LPM stems from the World Summit for Sustainable Development last year, when members of the National Intelligence Agency tried to disrupt regional LPM meetings during the build-up to the summit, in a push to form an integrated movement between the ANC and the LPM. They say the government did not expect the LPM to gain the momentum it has since its formation in 2001.
The NLC manages the LPM’s funds. Beck says there is a widespread feeling that the ANC, as part of its electioneering, is again heating up its campaign against social movements that are closer to its black constituencies.
Meanwhile the NLC, considered a pioneer of social movements in South Africa, will go back to the drawing board.
Rather than espousing mass mobilisation, the NLC will ”increasingly become a blue-chip NGO that will concentrate on advocacy, research and a working relationship with the state — as well as distancing itself from the LPM,” said a well-placed source.