Well-known ANC members jump ship to join MK party
Well-known players within Nelson Mandela Bay ANC circles have aligned themselves with the uMkhonto weSizwe Party championed by former president Jacob Zuma.
The interim structure held an inaugural regional meeting at Boardwalk’s Tshawe Bar yesterday.
The five-member structure consists of former disgruntled ANC members, several of whom left the party following the dissolution of their faction by the provincial leadership in 2018 amid internal disputes.
Former ANC Youth League regional chair Xolani Mgxoteni leads the region as convenor for MKP and former #FeesMustFall student activist Lizo Jim was appointed as regional co-ordinator.
Mgxoteni said not all members of the MKP were former members of the ANC as the party had a wide reach, attracting people from all walks of life.
“The party [ANC] has over the years had a prescribed way of doing things as per its constitution but the biggest problem they have is beyond factionalism,” he said.
“When a party leader does not like you as a person it is no longer factional but personal, which has never been a problem because I stayed with the party even in the face of adversity.
“But when the ANC moved away from what brought us to it in the first place, then we had no reason to be part of it.”
Mgxoteni believes things started going south for the ANC after the 2017 ANC provincial conference, when it wanted to form a coalition with the DA in Nelson Mandela Bay — a decision he said they were against as a region at the time.
“We fought against it but we ended up dissolved due to disagreements.”
Most recently, Mgxoteni served as the branch chair for Ward 23.
In 2017, he was elected as an additional member of the regional executive committee (REC).
This was the same conference that elected Andile Lungisa as chair but was later disbanded by the provincial executive committee.
In 2021, Mgxoteni was again under the spotlight after it emerged he had allegedly lied about his age to be part of the ANCYL national task team.
ANC documents showed Mgxoteni was born in 1985, meaning he was 36 years old at the time, which automatically
disqualified him.
Professional party hopper Nomakhaya Ntozini was elected alongside Mgxoteni in 2017 as an REC member.
She said joining the MKP was a difficult decision.
This is the third party Ntozini has been aligned to since leaving the ANC post the 2018 disbandment of the REC.
Ntozini was part of a group of ANC members from the city that took the ANC Eastern Cape bosses to court in a bid to overturn the outcome of the 2017 provincial conference dubbed the “festival of chairs”.
This was due to the disruptive and unruly nature of the conference.
“I was humiliated by a highranking member of the ANC in front of [branch] members for openly expressing my views about issues within the party after the 2017 conference, which is one of the reasons I left the party,” Ntozini said.
After losing the court bid, Ntozini joined the UDM and assisted then Bay mayor Mongameli Bobani.
“After he passed on, I was approached by DOP members to join them, and I did community work and helped build two houses in Motherwell,” she said.
Jim said he had joined the MKP because it was linked to Zuma, whom he respected.
“The majority of MK members come from the ANC and, of course, any party would like to have a figure of attraction like Zuma.
“But there are more important reasons to leave the ANC and join the MKP because it’s no longer what we knew it to be.
“It is in the pockets of white people and it is not driving the radical transformation agenda for our country.”
Jim has been involved with the youth formations of the ANC, starting with Cosas and Sasco.
He was president of the SRC at the University of Fort Hare, and later joined Sasco at a provincial level as an organiser and elections co-ordinator.
Masixole Mashelele, a former Bay Local Business Committee secretary, said he was a card-carrying member of the ANC but a supporter of the MKP movement.
“I joined MK because of things that are happening in the region about business because that’s my forte,” he said.
“When we fought against certain policies in business we would get stuck at a particular point because we had no influence politically to take our concerns forward. Being part of MK will assist in that.”
Former ANC member Arthur Marwana said he had not resigned from the ANC but left to join the MKP because he was not impressed with the party’s conduct.
“Our views were not being heard in the ANC because the leaders are stubborn.”
Marwana was an active member and former ANCYL chair at the Govan Mbeki cluster.
“I decided to join MK because I love its leader, Jacob, whose background we know because he was our president for nine years.”
Clive O’Conell said he had crossed floors to join the MKP because he had had a bad experience with leaders from his former political home, the DOP.
“Coming from the northern areas, I found that [DOP leaders] focused more on fighting against each other than dealing with issues of service delivery.”
ANC regional chair Babalwa Lobishe said by joining and participating in processes of another party, the former ANC members had expelled themselves.
“We won’t even waste our energy writing to them.
“We won’t even go through that process.
“A process was done with Zuma because he is a former president.
“But with others the constitution is clear. They have expelled themselves.”
According to the party’s constitution, any member who joins or supports any organisation or party other than the ANC or its alliance partners or an organisation whose aims, policies and objectives are contrary to the ANC can be suspended.