The Congress of the People’s leadership will be elected — seemingly without president Mosiuoa Lekota — as he was seeking an interdict to stop the conference on Saturday.
“The core founding leadership of Cope have decided to withdraw from the conference and to institute an urgent court interdict to prevent the hijacking of the party by a factionalist group set on destroying it, and to prevent further abuse of party resources,” Lekota’s spokesperson Phillip Dexter said in a statement.
This comes after the delegates at the conference voted late on Friday night to continue with the elective conference, after Lekota attempted this week to turn it into a policy conference.
The decision came after debates among delegates and a vote on the matter.
“There was a decision taken and it was an overwhelming one,” said Cope spokesperson Sipho Ngwema.
The conference started at 8.30am at the St George’s Hotel in Irene, outside Pretoria.
The party has recently been struggling with a bitter leadership battle between Lekota and his deputy and co-founder of the party Mbazima Shilowa.
“Despite the strife between factions aligned to Lekota and Shilowa, all the delegates are expected to be there,” said Ngwema.
“I don’t think people will not show up, if there are it will be a tiny faction,” he said.
Supporters of Lekota have called for the Cope conference to be postponed as they did not feel the party was ready.
Dexter, a staunch Lekota supporter, confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that a court interdict was being sought to declare any decisions taken at the conference, including the election of leaders, unlawful. “We are busy consulting the lawyers. We do not want the conference to stop, but we want it to continue being a policy conference,” said Dexter.
Supporters excluded
He added that Friday’s proceedings excluded many Cope members — mainly Lekota supporters — who had been denied entry into the hotel.
“Many people are still outside even this [Saturday] morning. They have been denied access and they have been denied food”.
Dexter said branches from five provinces: Limpopo, North West, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Mpumalanga — which had been excluded from the conference — supported the legal action. A reasonable number of CNC members also supported the court action, said Dexter.