Moloto calls PAC unity indaba ‘a meeting of rogues’
ONE OF the presidents of the embattled Pan Africanist Congress, Narius Moloto, has slammed the party’s crucial four-day unity conference currently under way in Kimberley, saying it is a meeting of “rogue elements”.
The conference was convened by the party’s stalwarts in an effort to unite warring factions and give the troubled party a lifeline following years of entrenched factional fights since the dawn of democracy.
Moloto is but one president of the three parallel structures of the PAC fighting for the soul of the former liberation movement. The party’s solitary MP, Luthando Mbinda, and former anti-apartheid activist Letlapa Mphahlele have also laid claim to the throne.
Power struggles within the PAC have resulted in a string of expulsions and counter-expulsions, splinter formations and parallel structures that saw it losing two of the three seats it once had in Parliament.
Yesterday, Moloto branded the unity conference – attended by both Mbinda’s and Mphahlele’s factions – as a meeting of rogues.
“Those people are not members of the PAC in good standing. Many of them have been expelled. They are rogue members and that gathering is a rogue gathering. From that conference, they will go nowhere. That is where they will end,” Moloto said.
He was declared PAC president last year after his faction expelled Mbinda as president, even though they failed to remove him as the party’s only representative in the National Assembly.
On Wednesday, Moloto was dealt a blow when his urgent court interdict against the unity conference was dismissed by the South Gauteng High Court. Delegates stressed that they did not regard him as their president, as he had also been suspended from the party before his election.
Moloto said he remained the president even if he was not recognised by those who tried to unite behind his back, adding that he was disappointed by the court failure.
“I was elected by the party’s delegates, properly constituted at the conference. I am not going around seeking recognition,” he said.
Mbinda blamed political egos of PAC leaders for the destruction of the party, saying the conference was critical if the organisation was to survive.
“We have always been protecting our egos. We have to do away with our personal egos. What is at play in this whole thing is exactly that. We all need to humble ourselves for the sake of this organisation.” Mbinda’s and Mphahlele’s national executive committees are set to meet on the sidelines of the unity conference as part of a possible merger and for joint plans for the upcoming national conference in December.
“It is exactly what we wanted to do with Narius. I call Mphahlele ‘president’ and he calls me ‘president’, and at least we are talking now to resolve our problems so that at the end of the day, we have one president,” Mbinda said.
Mphahlele called Moloto “delusional” for rejecting the unity interventions and for insulting founding stalwarts who pushed for it. They included former president Motsoko Pheko and former national chairperson Johnson Mlambo.
“The man is delusional. He attempted to interdict the conference and failed. He has already insulted the founders of the PAC. The people who were there in 1959 and founded the PAC, long before Narius was born, are the ones who are calling on us to meet.
“The man has just decided to stand alone and insult all of us,” Mphahlele said.