ANC appoints Baleka Mbete to lead the party’s women’s league task team
It is out with the old and in with the not-so-new in the ANC Women’s League. The party has appointed former National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete to head a task team that will run the organisation after the disbandment of its leadership structure in April.
Maropene Ramokgopa, a former youth activist and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special adviser on international relations, is the co-ordinator, and Maqueen Letshoha-Mathale was appointed fundraiser.
Mbete served as the ANC’s national chairperson for 10 years, between December 2007 and December 2017, and acted as the country’s deputy president for eight months after Thabo Mbeki’s recall.
Conspicuous by her absence is Bathabile Dlamini, the ANC Women’s League president from August 2015 until its disbandment. In April, she was found guilty of perjury while minister of social development and sentenced to four years in prison, half of which was suspended, with the option of a R200,000 fine.
Dlamini harbours ambitions to lead the women’s league again, party sources say. ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile previously said the party’s national executive committee (NEC) decided that members with ambitions of leading the league may not be in charge of the task team.
“We said at the NEC, we would like to have a convener and co-ordinator who have no vested interest in becoming leaders of the women’s league so that they are able to pull this thing together. The NEC did not say those who are leaders now should not be included in the team, but they have asked the officials to look at it,” Mashatile said in April.
While Dlamini has been left out of the team, Meokgo Matuba, the women league’s former secretary-general, is an additional member.
In a memo dated June 29, Mashatile announced that the NEC appointed Mbete as the convener of the women’s league national task team.
Mashatile said the team would ensure that the league’s structures were in good standing, that conferences were held in branches, regions and provinces so that the women’s league’s national conference was convened within a year and processes were accurate and the standing of the conference could not be contested.
The team includes senior members Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Sue van der Merwe, Dipuo Peters, Dina Pule, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, Pinky Kekana, Pamela Tshwete and Tina Joemat-Pettersson.