/ 10 February 2009

Stirred, but not shaken

She calls herself ”the brand Anele”, but the brand that 30-year-old Anele Mda launched just 16 weeks ago when she founded the youth branch of the Congress of the People (Cope) was sold to the wrong market or at too high a price, judging by the speed with which it’s going out of fashion.

Last week it became clear that Mda is hanging on to the last thread of her political career in Cope.

But Mda, whose shoot-from-the-lip style has invited comparisons with her ANC counterpart, Julius Malema, hasn’t lost her trademark nerve.

”It’s one thing to build a brand, but it’s another thing to sustain it,” she told the Mail & Guardian in response to queries about her imminent sacking from the job. ”I’m leading the Cope Youth Movement, as the convener, the head, the face, the voice and the hands.”

At a meeting last weekend, attended by Cope president, Mosioua Lekota, his first deputy Mbhazima Shilowa, and all provincial chairpeople of the youth movement, a decision was taken to remove Mda as the national youth convener.

Youth leaders who attended the meeting say the party is ”talking to someone” who will soon be revealed as Cope’s ”youth mentor”, but in reality will take over.

Mda started losing favour with some party leaders, especially Lekota and Shilowa, almost as soon as the party was formed, when she proved to be a temperamental spokesperson, prone to off-script remarks.

Several incidents sparking bad publicity rattled Cope’s two leaders. They included her comment that rape would be legalised should Jacob Zuma become South Africa’s president and a national news story in which Mda’s HIV-positive sister, Ayanda, claimed Mda had starved her and kicked her out of her house in Port Elizabeth because she wanted space for a domestic worker.

But while Mda is considered to be a liability in some party corridors, removing her from the leadership might not be so easy — and not just because ”the brand” seems unmoved by the news of her imminent demise. She has also attracted a lot of support from ordinary Cope members who like her direct Malema style and see her as being able to attract defectors from the ANC’s Youth League, to which she belonged until she was poached by Cope.

On the social network site hi5.com Mda describes herself as ”focus driven, easy going, [she] likes debates [and has a] passion for politics”.

Others see her ambitious — even aloof — behaviour as containing the seeds of her downfall.

After Cope’s manifesto launch in Port Elizabeth Mda chose to go to an after-party in Kwamaxaki township attended by senior party leaders, while the ”youth” got down at their own party in a city-centre nightclub. She has also been criticised for not wearing Cope branded gear at rallies, preferring her Nike tracksuits.

While her future hangs in the balance Mda is toughing it out. She told the M&G: ”They [her critics] have actually made me realise I’m the force to be reckoned with. If I was not making an impact on the lives of young people no one would be making efforts to check what I do every day and why.

”I remain a strong and steady woman, I’m not shaken.”