The ANC’s North West leadership has launched a desperate rearguard action to stave off its possible dissolution by the party’s national executive committee (NEC).
The protracted battle between the NEC and the North West provincial executive committee (PEC) could be resolved at an NEC meeting this weekend with a possible decision to dissolve the North West PEC.
Last week the PEC sent a document to ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe and eight NEC members deployed to the province questioning allegations that it was elected fraudulently.
The document, leaked to the Mail & Guardian, implied that if the PEC was a fraud, the NEC was implicated in it, as it was involved in the process leading up to and following the Sun City conference.
The document said a Luthuli House team conducted branch audits while NEC member Fikile Mbalula was sent to North West to resolve complaints from branches and gave the conference the green light.
In addition, ANC president Jacob Zuma addressed the conference, and NEC members Nathi Mthethwa and Siphiwe Nyanda respectively presided over credentials and closed the conference, calling it ”a success”.
In the document the PEC said the challenges after the Sun City conference included the ”mobilisation of an anti-PEC campaign, resistance by NEC to assert acceptance of the conference outcome and lack of trust by some NEC members in the PEC”.
The tensions were exacerbated by the NEC’s decision to appoint Maureen Modiselle as North West premier, ignoring three names the PEC submitted.
The ANC’s national working committee has proposed an early elective conference to install a new PEC.
In the Eastern Cape a power struggle threatens the unity of the ANC-led alliance.
Weeks before the elective conference in August, ANC members in the province are divided on whether provincial finance minister Mcebisi Jonas or health minister and South African Communist Party treasurer Phumulo Masualle should become the ANC provincial chairperson.
Jonas’s supporters are led by ANC Youth League provincial secretary Ayanda Matiti, whereas the league’s provincial chairperson, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, leads Masualle’s group, which includes Cosatu and the Communist Party.
Jonas’s group believes Masualle’s election would mean giving power to the left, whereas Masualle says electing Jonas would mean handing it to the Congress of the People.
Matiti recently lashed out at Cosatu and the SACP for publicly declaring their support for Masualle, as ”the ANC has never found it necessary to pronounce itself on who should lead the SACP and Cosatu”.
He said the ANCYL executive would throw its weight behind Jonas.
Qoboshiyane dismissed suggestions that Masualle’s win would represent a victory to the left. ”The alliance is here to stay. It’s important that we move away from the affairs of the left and the right,” he said.
The national executive committee is also expected to decide whether to disband the Western Cape PEC.