MK calls open season on ANC

POACHING: ZUMA’S NEW PARTY FINDS FERTILE HUNTING GROUND AMONG THE DISILLUSIONED

Coordinators aim to convert traditional leaders to the cause this weekend.

Former president Jacob Zuma is using disgruntled ANC executives to mobilise voters for his party.

Zuma has left no doubt that he is exiting the ANC, although he still maintains he remains a loyal member of the party.

However, he has been shown on social media as the face of the newly established uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party on its election posters.

Zuma recently announced provincial command teams, comprising convenors and coordinators for each of the provinces who were recruited from ANC branch and regional leaders and local councillors.

Among the names is Ishmael Semonyo, a former ANC ward 14 branch chair in Matlosana, North West, who confirmed that he had left the ANC for MK.

Many former ANC members from Madibeng, including a former branch secretary and ward 34 councillor in the municipality, appeared on the list of MK’s mobilising and campaign team.

It is understood that an ANC ward 31 executive member and a South African Civic Organisation activist at Modderspruit in Madibeng has resigned from the ANC to join MK.

“Madibeng has become the breeding ground for MK,” a concerned ANC member said anonymously. “These people are using the same strategy used by Cope [Congress of the People] to first send grassroot members to establish structures and later they will join as ‘big names’.

The MK coordinators’ first task was to recruit for the new party, which is targeting ANC members who have issues with the ruling party.

“Recruiting members is very important for us at this moment,” Semonyo said.

Zuma is expected to visit North West, where he will mobilise traditional leaders during a rally at Taung tomorrow.

The coordinators have been organising for traditional leaders to attend the gathering, where they are expected to air their concerns to Zuma and his delegation.

Some traditional leaders are apparently looking to Zuma as the last hope after being sidelined by the ruling party.

Many chiefs have expressed dissatisfaction about how they were undermined by ANC structures, such as ANC branch executive committee members, councillors and leaders of the ANC-aligned South African National Civic Organisation.

These bodies have often clashed with amakhosi, or tribal leaders, over power and turf control, especially land, which they were supposed to have hereditary ownership of.

Traditional communities under amakhosi have been neglected and have not been prioritised for public services by the government and municipalities.

Some villages still have no electricity, roads and bridges, community halls, cemeteries or public transport, and many experience water shortages, while urban townships are offered all those services.

Many villages throughout the country have no schools or clinics, and children use pit latrine toilets, while agricultural activity has come to a standstill since the end of the homeland system, which assisted communities with tilling equipment and seeds to plant and feed their families.

The problem of neglect of rural development and lack of community upliftment is widespread in the rural areas in the Eastern Cape, North West and Limpopo.

Some of these provinces are notorious for dangerous pit latrine toilets, the bucket system and mud schools.

Last week Zuma met a delegation of traditional leaders at his Nkandla homestead in KwaZulu-Natal to discuss the problems and they pledged to support MK. – ericn@citizen.co.za