Black Management Forum (BMF) president Jimmy Manyi has centralised communication in the organisation since the Mail & Guardian published a story about plans by some members to vote him out at the BMF’s annual general meeting in Midrand next week.
Former BMF deputy president Bonang Mohale is challenging Manyi for the presidency. In an email leaked to the M&G, Manyi instructed BMF managing director Gaba Tabane and North West chairperson Fani Xaba:
- To decline radio interviews unrelated to the conference and refer them to him or deputy president Nomhle Nkumbi-Ndopu;
- To stick to their ”knitting” — running the BMF’s operations — and not pronounce on strategic issues;
- To urge print journalists to send written questions and circulate them to the executive committee for an organisational response; and
- To re-issue a caution that board members should not respond to media enquiries and to remind them that the BMF suspended a board member, Joe Mwase, for five years because he spoke to the media.
Manyi says in the email that he has been inundated with calls from angry ”senior ANC/government people” about the M&G article.
Manyi later referred M&G questions to Tabane, saying there is an agreement that no BMF board member will speak to the media on the succession issue.
Responding to the questions sent to Tabane, deputy president Nkumbi-Ndopu said she viewed the allegations against Manyi as ”a malicious ploy to discredit” the BMF president.
”BMF is a broad church which includes ANC and government officials and any member is free to express their concerns,” she said, adding that ”unfounded and unsubstantiated” matters placed in the public domain were misleading BMF members and stakeholders.
”Internal matters of the BMF are handled in terms of its procedures and we do not have to account to any other party,” said Nkumbi-Ndopu.
Some BMF members had voiced unhappiness with Manyi’s endorsement of the ANC in the run-up to the elections.
His appointment to the post of director-general for the Labour Department has also created discomfort.