/ 16 December 2008

Cope calls on MPs to support Pikoli

Photo gallery

View a photo gallery of the Cope conference in Bloemfontein

President Kgalema Motlanthe may face an uphill battle in his attempt to persuade Parliament to rubber-stamp his decision to fire suspended National Prosecuting Authority boss Vusi Pikoli.

The Congress of the People (Cope) has claimed it has the support of a number of ANC parliamentarians. The party has now called on these MPs to vote against the dismissal of Pikoli, which must be approved by parliamentarians before it can take effect.

Parliament is due to deliberate on this issue in January.

Motlanthe announced his decision at the same time that he released the Ginwala report early in December, set up in September last year by former president Thabo Mbeki to look into Pikoli’s fitness to hold office.

Pikoli claimed he was suspended because his office planned to arrest police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi for corruption.

The Ginwala commission failed to show that he was unfit for office.

‘We hope that members of Parliament will exercise their independence and oversight role as guaranteed by the Constitution in dealing with this matter,” Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota told delegates during his closing address at the party’s inaugural conference in Bloemfontein on Tuesday.

Lekota told reporters that his appeal to MPs was because Motlanthe’s decision to axe Pikoli was ‘short of just-ness”.

‘The appeal is to members of the ruling party and all opposition parties to say as MP’s ‘you have to exercise your individual conciousness’.”

‘MPs are also duty-bound not to outrage our better senses. We appeal to them to vindicate themselves in the eyes of the people of this country.”

The interim leadership of Cope were on Tuesday confirmed in their positions.

In addition to Lekota, Mbhazima Shilowa was installed as deputy president while Cope organiser Lynda Odendaal was named as second deputy president.

The rest of the top leadership consists of Charlotte Lobe as general secretary, with Deirdre Carter as her deputy. Lyndall Shope-Mafole was named as head of international relations, Hilda Ndude was appointed treasurer and Mluleki George has become the national organiser.

Smuts Ngonyama was elected as head of policy, Philip Dexter as communications chief, Mlungisi Hlongwane as head of elections and Zarina Ebrahim as the head of these sectors.

Cope also said on Tuesday that Girlie Majola-Pikoli — the wife of Vusi Pikoli — would form part of its leadership team.

Majola-Pikoli told the Mail & Guardian earlier this month that ”for now my husband is strictly an ANC member and I don’t think he will leave anytime soon. Everybody must make their own decisions about where they want to be,” she said.

Affirmative action
Lekota also addressed affirmative action, saying it should continue, but ‘not be done on the basis of race”.

‘It can’t be done by taking this white one and putting a black one in.”

He said all South Africans deserving of economic support should receive it, including minority groups.

He confirmed that Cope would continue to support the government’s current macro-economic policy framework (known as the growth, employment and redistribution programme, or Gear).

‘We were part of government [when Gear was adopted] and we were in support of these measures then.”

‘These policies continue to enjoy our support.”

The Cope election manifesto was expected to be launched in the middle of January, but Lekota called on members to start acting as ‘election activists” to make South Africans understand why they should vote for the new party.

At Umkhonto weSizwe’s (MK) 47th anniversary rally being held at the Seisa Ramabodu Stadium in Phahameng on Tuesday, chairperson of the MK veterans’ association Kebby Maphotso said Cope leaders had deliberately chosen the Day of Reconciliation to launch their party and it would work to their advantage as it was already popular with South Africans.

Cope is holding its own rally at the Free State Cricket Stadium in Bloemfontein. This is a few kilometres from where African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma addressed the MK rally earlier on Tuesday.