Not even two hours after Allan Boesak announced his resignation from the Congress of the People (Cope) on Tuesday, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana issued a statement inviting him back to the African National Congress.
”Mdladlana says he wishes to remind Boesak about his home, the organisation with ideology and vision, the ANC,” said a statement released by Mdladlana’s office.
The minister, who is also leader of the ANC Western Cape task team, ”welcomed Boesak’s move to disassociate himself [from] an ailing party”.
”Cope is vague, lost and confused,” said Mdladlana.
”Cope is just a party of silly desperados that’s just playing on people’s sentiments and working and operating outside the consciousness of the people of South Africa.”
Boesak quit Cope on Tuesday, saying its structures were in disarray.
”From the very beginning the party structures, such as they were, were characterised by faction fighting, strife, pitched battles for political supremacy and duplicity …
”At this point the party structures continue to be in disarray.”
Boesak ”expressly” said he did not want a leadership position in Cope when he joined it in December 2008.
”It was only after the severest pressures that I conceded to assist the party in the elections.”
Deep resentment was caused within the party ”by the irregularities with the list process, and the interim leadership situation persisted and made normal work almost impossible”, Boesak said in a statement.
This is an apparent reference to reports of in-fighting between Mvume Dandala — elected as Cope’s presidential candidate — and party leader Mosiuoa Lekota.
Boesak said many ”good, hard workers” in the party had been suspended because they dared to criticise the leadership.
”It seems that the mud is rising. I have no desire to subject my family, myself or my calling to serve our people to these sorts of indignities and destructive politicking.”
Cope spokesperson Phillip Dexter brushed aside Boesak’s criticism, saying it was never going to be easy to launch a new political party.
”We’ve received his resignation with regret. He joined the party when we launched … so obviously people had high hopes for his involvement.
”The kind of challenges he pointed out … are ordinary challenges when you are dealing with a new organisation.
”We wish him the best in his future endeavours,” Dexter said.
Boesak’s resignation is not the first to hit the party that saw the light late last year under the leadership of former African National Congress veterans Lekota, Mluleki George and Mbhazima Shilowa.
The trio were all vocal supporters of ex-president Thabo Mbeki, who was ousted by the ruling party’s national executive committee.
Two senior Cope leaders, Simon Grindrod and Lynda Odendaal, resigned in recent months, expressing disappointment with the way the party was being managed.
Cope is the third-biggest party in Parliament and has been increasingly working with the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance.
Boesak promised to ”continue with my work in the civil society, in the church and as extraordinary professor at the University of Stellenbosch”.
He said ”working for the integrity of this democracy of the people of South Africa is what I have always been called to do”, adding that he would return to work for the ”globalisation project” with churches in South Africa and Germany.
”Here, as before, I can work with dignity and purpose.”
In the meantime, he would continue to pray for Cope.
”My prayer is that Cope will find that hope and vision again and so fulfil the promise it had made to the people of South Africa, now almost one year ago.”
Boesak, who was convicted of fraud in 1999 but later pardoned, recently released his autobiography, Running with Horses: Reflections of an Accidental Politician, in which he maintains his innocence in the fraud case.
The fraud and theft conviction related to more than R1,5-million of foreign donor funds in the apartheid era.
Boesak was forced to delay the launch of the book when it emerged he would name some ANC members who allegedly received the money for which he went to jail. National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel demanded that some references to his family be removed and Boesak had to re-write a chapter of the book. — Sapa