The Congress of the People’s maiden elective conference faces mounting credibility and legitimacy challenges, with more provinces threatening to pull out of the national congress two weeks before it is due to take place.
Two provinces — Limpopo and Mpumalanga — confirmed this week that they will boycott the conference, and the Free State is considering joining the stayaway.
The faction in the Eastern Cape that supports the re-election of Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota has gone as far as to threaten legal action.
The provinces are unhappy with the short preparation period, claim auditing of branches was flawed and allege branches that do not support deputy president Mbhazima Shilowa’s campaign have been purged.
The decision to hold the May 27 to 30 conference was taken in February after a push by supporters of Shilowa, who will battle it out with Lekota for the party’s presidency.
Eastern Cape leader of the Lekota faction Sipho Mkwayi said the group was consulting lawyers. “We’ve written to the general secretary and the president and are awaiting their response. If they decide to go ahead with the conference, we’ll get a court interdict,” Mkwayi said.
Mpumalanga secretary Baks Mahlangu said the province would support any effort to suspend the conference, including an interdict. “There will be serious consequences if the conference proceeds. This will really torment the building of the party.”
Cope general secretary Charlotte Lobe insisted this week that the conference would go ahead. Head office had asked the provinces to submit queries before the end of this week.
Lobe confirmed all aggrieved structures had submitted queries, including one region in the Eastern Cape, three in the Free State and the provincial leaderships of Mpumalanga and Limpopo. Cope would defend any legal action to stop the conference.
Limpopo chairperson Sello Moloto said it was impossible to prepare for an elective conference in two months, but ruled out legal action. “We’re not emotional on this issue.”
No branches would be forced to boycott the conference, Moloto said, but the leadership was confident of buy-in because disqualified branches were in the majority in the province. A total of 217 Limpopo branches, or 61%, were disqualified after a three-day audit by a team sanctioned by Cope House.
The Free State sent a four-person delegation to Cope headquarters to try to resolve their branch audit problems. The provincial chairperson of the Cope Youth Movement, Charles Mgwadleka, part of the delegation, said they would be guided by national leaders. “Maybe we’ll reach that point where we’ll say ‘please excuse us’,” Mgwadleka said. He said the Free State membership, 12000 before the audits, was now down to 5800 after Neville Mompati’s team disqualified almost half the branches.
Lobe said some provinces had failed to do their jobs. “Mpumalanga could not produce membership forms or attendance registers. They only produced eight branches and an audit was done on those.”
She accused Limpopo of having “bogus branches”. The auditors had made random phone calls to people on attendance registers for branch meetings. Some of them were found to be as young as 13, whereas others claimed to have last attended a Cope meeting before last year’s elections.
Mahlangu conceded that infighting had delayed the building of structures in Mpumalanga, but said progress was now being made.
The Eastern Cape’s Mkwayi claimed branch auditors, with the help of the provincial leadership, had added branches that did not exist and disqualified those viewed pro-Lekota.
“We were told in the provincial general council that there were delegates from Alfred Nzo and Joe Gabi regions. As far as we know, those regions are long dead,” Mkwayi said.
The pro-Lekota group formed a parallel leadership structure last year, but was snubbed by the congress national committee when it ratified the leadership of chairperson Andile Nkuhlu.
In Gauteng national committee leader Lyndall Shope-Mafole has emailed a disgruntled group that also argues the party is not ready for the conference. In the email, Shope-Mafole challenges the group to say what readiness meant.
“This is important so that it is not said that you want to reward those who do not want to work hard to launch their branches,” she said, warning the group against becoming “rebels without a cause”.