The Western Cape ANC has dropped charges against its former provincial chief whip Max Ozinsky and ANC MP Ebrahim Rasool as it tries to put the embarrassing affair behind it.
The two senior ANC officials were charged with bringing the ANC into disrepute in November, but a provincial disciplinary committee threw out the case against Ozinsky last week because alleged violations were not detailed. Days later, the charges against Ozinsky were reinstated.
But the ANC provincial task team convener, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, confirmed this week that he is lifting their suspensions, saying he had called a meeting with the two men.
He said he was now satisfied they would “submit themselves to the provisions of the constitution, rules and regulations of the ANC”.
Ozinsky and Rasool were suspended after both gave explosive accounts of the tensions in the Western Cape ANC on the opinion pages in the Mail & Guardian.
In his article Ozinsky said he had encountered serious misuses of power by Rasool, whereas Rasool wrote about “the Faustian pact” between some in the ANC and the Democratic Alliance in the province.
But the ANC’s hopes that perceived factions in the province would be neutralised by disciplining Ozinsky and Rasool evaporated when charging them divided the party even further. And the provincial task team, which was installed in July last year after the party disbanded its provincial executive committee, has come under heavy fire for its alleged inept handling of the tensions in the province.
Many of the ANC branches have been dissolved by the task team and party sources told the M&G the province now appears ill-prepared for the 2011 municipal elections.
Following the lifting of their suspensions on Thursday, Mdladlana said Ozinsky and Rasool were now allowed to participate in ANC work again.
Mdladlana said that as part of the list of commitments both politicians had made, Ozinsky and Rasool would “cooperate and participate in the work of the provincial task team of uniting members of the ANC and rebuilding of the structures of the organisation”.