South Africans must get used to the idea of being free to listen to all political parties, said suspended former ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota on Wednesday.
”There is no such thing in a democracy that you can say ‘I can have your vote until Jesus Christ comes: that’s out,” he said at a debate with other political parties in Sandton, Johannesburg. He was referring to a statement ANC president Jacob Zuma had made.
”No party has the right to say ‘don’t talk to people, they are my voters’,” he said.
Since Lekota said he would hold a national convention to gauge public opinion on political issues and possibly form a new political party, the ANC has moved to shore up its position ahead of the elections in 2009.
ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte said the party welcomed the formation of new parties and did not approve of the behaviour of ANC supporters who disrupted one of the convention’s meetings in Orange Farm last Friday.
”We believe in opposition, not enmity,” she said.
But the party felt Lekota should do it in his ”own space”.
She also asked why it had taken Lekota 31 years to raise his concerns, referring to how longer he had been an ANC member. He was voted out as chairperson last December and finally suspended after he announced his plans to split with the party.
The Freedom Front Plus’s Pieter Mulder warned that the current split from the ANC was not the first and cautioned that the ”real split” would come when people start questioning values and mandates.
African Christian Democratic Partly leader Kenneth Meshoe said that the recent swearing and threats showed a level of intolerance in the country. The ANC silenced minority parties in Parliament, he added.
‘The ANC is very cold’
Meanwhile, senior ANC member Phillip Dexter and former ANC Women’s caucus parliamentary chairperson Kiki Rwexana said they had quit the party on Tuesday.
They told reporters in Cape Town they would take part in Lekota’s convention in Gauteng this weekend.
Dexter recently resigned from the South African Communist Party.
Rwexana is also a former deputy secretary general of the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL), and is the first sitting ANC MP to resign from the party and from Parliament.
Dexter said he was leaving the ANC with a great deal of sadness, but the ANC had undergone a ”transformation” since about 2004.
Personal ambition, revenge, and vindictiveness had become the main driving force behind the movement.
”Dishonesty has really become the order of the day. Most alarming has been the peddling of many lies by current ANC leaders in recent times to justify political positions and decisions, and in particular, the election or removal of people to and from political office.”
The current ANC leadership was at the forefront of undermining the Constitution, Dexter said.
Rwexana said she too was sad to leave the party, which had been her second home for a long time.
However, she said: ”Today the ANC is very cold … It depends on which side you are supporting.
”The ANC we used to know is no more. The ANC that taught democracy in South Africa is no more … that taught respect to each, respect to the elderly, is no more.
”There’s hatred and anger in the ANC [now]. If you have a different view, you are no longer regarded as a member of the ANC. You are regarded as someone who is anti-ANC,” she said.
Laying the foundations
Former Free State leader of the National Party, Inus Aucamp, and several other local NP leaders have apparently thrown their weight behind the ANC dissidents, the Volksblad newspaper reported on Wednesday.
”We would like to grab the opportunity and work together to lay the foundations of the new party,” the report quoted Aucamp as saying.
He added, however: ”The idea is definitely not to join the new party.”
The others, who with Aucamp were organising a meeting with former Lekota in Bloemfontein on Wednesday, are former NP members Johan Swanepoel and Pieter Vorster.
Aucamp said the original idea was that Lekota would address a small group of leaders, but apparently interest grew so much that they had thrown the meeting open.
The former NP leader said their interest in a possible new party was due to ”the inclusive process around certain principles”. – Sapa