/ 28 January 2010

Leadership battle rocks Cope

The fight for leadership at Cope has finally been thrown into the open, with a pro-Mosiuoa Lekota group circulating a list of preferred leaders.

The fight for leadership positions at the Congress of the People (Cope) has finally been thrown into the open, with a pro-Mosiuoa Lekota group of the party’s youth movement circulating a list of its preferred leaders to the media on Thursday.

In an email titled “Lekota youth hits back”, the group said it was only able to release the list to the media after the party president — “Comrade Terror” — “changed his mind” after he had initially asked his supporters to wait until the time was right to launch the campaign. Three out of four members of the group confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that they knew about the document and the views expressed in it.

Bantu Sosibo, acting KwaZulu-Natal provincial youth leader, said he did not know that the document had been distributed, but confirmed its origin and authenticity. “It was compiled by the national consultative conference that was held in Greytown on December 5th,” he said. In addition to journalists, the document was also sent to Cope general secretary Charlotte Lobe and youth leader Anele Mda.

The top six on the pro-Lekota group featured:

  • Mosiuoa Lekota: president
  • Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka: deputy president
  • Mvume Dandala: chairperson
  • Smuts Ngonyama: general secretary
  • Lyndall Shope-Mafole: deputy general secretary
  • Jullian Killian: treasurer general

Notable absentees were Cope’s deputy president Mbhazima Shilowa, the party’s general secretary Charlotte Lobe and her deputy Deidre Carter, national organiser Mluleki George and treasurer Hilda Ndude. They did not even make it to the list of candidates for the congress national committee.

The list also left out businessmen Andile Nkuhlu from the Eastern Cape and congress national committee member Andile Mazwai, who are accused by the pro-Lekota group of funding the Shilowa lobby group to unseat Lekota.

The pro-Lekota group, with representatives from all provinces except the North West and Mpumalanga, scolded the leadership of the Cope Youth Movement, who at the weekend adopted a document calling for the disbandment of the national leadership. “We wish to state that the call to disband [the] CNC is not the product of the youth, but that of Shilowa’s feudalist cadets” said the document.

“Regions all over the country did not approve of this move, therefore we seek to declare our support [to] the CNC”.

The pro-Lekota group was also lobbying for former youth movement spokesperson Sipho Nghona to be the president of the youth wing, Eastern Cape provincial secretary of the youth movement Nqaba Bhanga for the secretary position and Limpopo youth leader Thabiso Teffo as the national organiser. Both Bhanga and Teffo are members of the youth movement’s national steering committee, who differed with the calls to disband the national leadership. They have since been suspended.

This is the first time that a lobby group within Cope has released details of its leadership preferences. The party’s leaders have denied that a leadership contest was brewing behind the scenes and sown divisions within the party. No date has been set for Cope’s policy and elective conferences and calls have been mounting for the conferences to be held by May to stop widening divisions that now threaten the year-old party.