Former struggle icon Allan Boesak on Tuesday became the latest high-profile figure to join the newly formed Congress of the People (Cope).
He announced his decision at the final session of Cope’s three-day founding conference in Bloemfontein.
Boesak rose to prominence in the 1980s as a churchman and a leader of the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front.
He served a brief jail sentence in 2000 after being convicted of fraud and theft of over R1,5-million of donor funds.
A former head of the Geneva-based World Council of Reformed Churches, he has held senior positions in the NG Sendingkerk, and was a driving force behind its adoption of the prophetic Belhar Confession.
He resigned all posts in its successor, the Uniting Reformed Church, in October this year claiming dissatisfaction at the way the church was dealing with the issue of homosexuality.
In July this year he accused the African National Congress (ANC) of entrenching racial hatred instead of preaching tolerance.
In a public address in Cape Town, he said the party had ”brought back the hated system of racial categorisation”, and said affirmative action had in some cases taken on new forms of racial exclusion, throwing overboard the solidarity forged through years of struggle.
Meanwhile, a reverend praying at the political gathering at the University of the Free State on Tuesday asked God to keep Cope ”from the enemy camp”.
”Purify them from hatred and keep Cope safe from the enemy camp, and for the enemies and those in the enemy camp, we can only pray they receive deliverance for their prejudice,” Reverend Joe Ndlela said in his prayer.
He was opening the third day of Cope’s founding conference in Bloemfontein.
The reverend asked that God help all deliberations by Cope to create a new and better South Africa for all.
”We also ask that you guide the new leadership Mosiuoa …Mbhazima … Charlotte and the others..”
Cope formally launches its 2009 election campaign on Tuesday at a Bloemfontein rally.
Though Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota has been at pains to stress that Cope will not be bussing in converts en masse, attendance will inevitably be compared with an ANC event to be addressed by Jacob Zuma on the other side of town.
Before the close of the conference, the 4 000-odd delegates are expected to choose the leadership that will see the party through the 2009 polls and beyond.
Lekota, who has been Cope’s interim chairperson, was expected to take on the position of president, which would put him at the head of the party. — Sapa