Political neophyte Congress of the People (Cope) is in the throes of a financial and leadership crisis, newspaper reports said on Friday.
The party, which garnered 30 seats in Parliament after the April 22 polls, was in dire financial straits, reported the Sowetan.
Cope was no longer able to pay its employees, said the newspaper.
Quoting party insiders, the Sowetan said ”pretty soon” Cope president Terror Lekota would be unable to pay his own salary, a reason he wanted to go to Parliament.
It said Lekota failed to raise a million rand despite pledges from businessmen in the Afrikaner community.
The Star reported that an internal party memorandum, compiled by a senior member of its executive, Simon Grindrod, describes a party racked by ”divisions and undemocratic principles”.
The memorandum argued that the party formed by members of the ruling party after former President Thabo Mbeki’s ousting was ”becoming just like the ANC in practice”, the report said.
According to the memorandum, posted on Independent Online, Grindrod bemoans the confusion over party leadership resulting in ”issues of credibility”.
This stems from the party president not leading it in Parliament while its first deputy president, former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, is the chief whip and its official presidential candidate, Mvume Dandala, leads the parliamentary team.
”It is increasing the case that ordinary members ask, ‘who leads us?”’
He also refers to the leadership debacle raging in the party, which it had in the past denied, as an ”extremely damaging situation”.
”We now face the extremely dangerous situation of having parallel structures in many provinces and regions aligned to either the deputy president [Shilowa] or the president [Lekota],” the document reads.
”This scenario is rapidly becoming a carbon copy of the events in the ANC which led to Polokwane.
”… Cope is in very real danger of following the route of the UDM and [Independent Democrats] if difficult decisions are not made immediately,” Grindrod wrote of two breakaway parties who started strong but quickly lost their spark.
He said ”division and indecision” were taking its toll on the party’s grassroots structures.
Reporting on the same memorandum, Business Day said it got the document from a senior Cope leader who said it had to be made public because the party’s leadership was in denial.
Another Sowetan report said Cope members were planning to oust Lekota before the party’s elective conference set to take place in 2011.
Shilowa backers were planning to use his stint in Parliament as a ”launchpad” to punt him as an alternative to Lekota, the report said.
It added that potential funders also preferred the former Gauteng premier, adopting a ”wait and see attitude” pending this outcome.
The report said Lekota was also at loggerheads with the party’s general secretary, Charlotte Lobbe, who was tasked with building the party with him but is now disillusioned.
Party spokesperson Phillip Dexter told the paper only the party’s elective conference in 2011 could remove Lekota.
He told the Business Day the party would look at Grindrod’s views contained in the memorandum next week to determine their validity. The memorandum was circulated among the party’s congress working committee for discussion.
On Cope’s financial problems, Dexter conceded to the Sowetan that there were ”some outstanding debts” which could not be described as ”financial difficulties”.
”There are no major problems. What we have are a few outstanding debts from the elections but we are paying those … so it’s not a financial crisis,” Dexter told the paper.
The report said top spin doctors employed by the party, including Onkgopotse JJ Tabane and former Scorpions communications boss Sipho Ngwema, have jumped ship and were never paid by the party — leaving Cope’s communication strategy in tatters. — Sapa