The African National Congress (ANC) will file an urgent application against the use of the name Congress of the People (Cope) in court next week Wednesday, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
ANC spokesperson Steyn Speed confirmed that the application for an interdict against Cope, led by former ANC veteran Mosiuoa Lekota, would be heard next Wednesday.
This will be less than a week before Cope’s planned launch date of December 16.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation reported that the hearing would be held in the Pretoria High Court, and that the ANC would also ask for an order to stop the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) from registering Cope as a political party.
The IEC is expected to file court papers on Wednesday and Cope is expected to file its papers on Friday.
The ANC is arguing that the Congress of the People in 1955 was a ”seminal, historical event” organised by the ANC and its congress alliance partners. The Freedom Charter was adopted at this event.
The ANC is also concerned about the fact that ”in many political circles, the ANC is commonly referred to as the Congress of the People”, its spokesperson Carl Niehaus said earlier.
The Nguni translation of the ANC is khongolese, which means congress.
Lekota was among a string of Cabinet ministers who resigned out of loyalty to former president Thabo Mbeki, who was removed from office by the national executive committee of the ANC in September.
Since then, Lekota, alongside his former deputy defence minister Mluleki George and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, announced the creation of the breakaway party.
Another coup for Cope
Meanwhile on Tuesday Cope paraded yet another member of the National Assembly before the media – Mampe Ramotsamai, whose constituency is among the vineyard workers of Stellenbosch.
She explained the difficulties she had in deciding to leave the ANC after having been a loyal member of it since 1983, having joined it underground ”when it was not as fashionable as it is today”.
But she said that the party is not the party it once was.
”We began to forget why we were there,” she said, ”that is for the people. It became a party for individuals.”
She said she had found it difficult to explain to her constituents and to her children why the party got rid of Mbeki just six months before the end of his term of office.
”I have a responsibility now to make sure I change things now for the future of my children and my country.”
Ramotsamai said that voting for the Bills abolishing the Scorpions was one of the most painful moments of her life.
She said she believed the unit had done wonderful work, but she felt bound by the decisions the party took at Polokwane.
”A number of MPs felt guilty about what they were doing,” she said.
But as a member of the public works committee in Parliament, she was a keen supporter of the Expropriation Bill.
As a farmworkers’ MP she felt it was a tool to help redress the imbalances of the past. – Sapa, I-Net Bridge