Problems with delegate registration on Friday caused major hold-ups at the African National Congress’s (ANC) Eastern Cape provincial conference in Alice.
Registration, which involves creating a photo identity card for each of the more than 1 700 voting delegates, was supposed to have been completed before the opening session at the University of Fort Hare on Thursday night.
That session was delayed by several hours in the hope that the registration would be completed, and eventually went ahead even though large numbers of delegates still did not have their cards.
On Friday morning the conference convened again to hear an address from ANC president Thabo Mbeki, then broke again immediately to allow the registration process to continue.
At 3pm on Friday the registration venue still looked like a bad day at the Department of Home Affairs, with scores of delegates crammed into the room where the cards were being processed with the aid of a single camera and computer.
Some slept with their heads on their arms, and others queued patiently, crammed together on benches.
Still more delegates, who had already been processed, waited in a room upstairs for their cards to be issued.
”I’m patient, because they explained what is the problem,” said a delegate from the OR Tambo region, who did not want to be named, in the upstairs room.
”I’m satisfied with that, because we are not in a hurry. We are going to stay here [at the conference] for two days or more. No problem for us.”
The photo IDs are required for voting for the provincial executive, including the post of chairperson, which is being vacated by Makhenkesi Stofile.
The conference was supposed to have a session for nominations on Friday afternoon, followed by voting on Friday evening.
Some delegates said darkly that the delays were deliberate, and an attempt to undermine support for Stone Sizani, one of the two candidates for the chairperson’s position.
At one point a large group of delegates from the Amathole region — most of whose branches have been mandated to support Sizani — marched down to the venue where the conference was supposed to be under way, singing: ”ANC members, why are you sitting down when things are falling apart?”
Amathole chairperson Mluleki George told them that he was determined that all the region’s delegates would be registered.
”There’s no way we are going to be penalised for some administrative problems,” he said. — Sapa