Business Day

Support of Masualle ‘a bid to divide’

Would-be deputy president Mabuyane says Eastern Cape not elective conference voting cows

- Mawande AmaShabala­la

ANC Eastern Cape provincial chair and deputy president hopeful Oscar Mabuyane says the KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee’s decision to endorse his provincial colleague, Phumulo Masualle, before engaging with them smacks of an attempt to divide the province before the ANC’s national elective conference in December.

ANC Eastern Cape provincial chair and deputy president hopeful Oscar Mabuyane says the KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee’s decision to endorse his provincial colleague, Phumulo Masualle, before engaging with them, seems like a bid to divide the province before the ANC’s national elective conference in December.

The KwaZulu-Natal PEC endorsed Masualle to stand for secretary-general under former health minister Zweli Mkhize’s slate. Mabuyane said his leadership had since engaged with Masualle with a view to ensuring the alleged mission to split the province’s vote at the national conference did not succeed.

According to Mabuyane, the Eastern Cape would not let itself to be made voting fodder at the December 16-20 elective conference, where new national leaders will be chosen.

His said his aim as provincial chair was to consolidat­e the province and ensure it speaks with one voice at the conference, to be held at Nasrec in Gauteng. “We had not been engaged by KwaZulu-Natal. Our view was that this [endorsemen­t of Masualle] was an attempt to divide the Eastern Cape,” Mabuyane said. “It was never a genuine move. It was always an attempt to divide us in this province because of a fallacy that the Eastern Cape can be divided into 50-50 or 60-40. Going for comrade Phumulo has never been a genuine move. If it was, it would have been organic from the Eastern Cape.”

The Eastern Cape premier said the KwaZulu-Natal manoeuvre was premised on an incorrect perception that his leadership was in conflict with Masualle. That could not be further from the truth, he said. It was the Mabuyane-led Eastern Cape that lobbied for Masualle to be elected to the ANC national executive committee (NEC) at the 2017 national conference.

“We supported comrade Phumulo in 2017. That is why he is in the NEC. It is us who protected him until he finished his term as premier in 2019. We have met comrade Phumulo as a province through the provincial secretary. I have spoken to him personally when we met in the last NEC meeting. The main issue is about how to consolidat­e our province.”

Mabuyane’s said Masualle was not an active participan­t in the agenda of forces set on dividing the Eastern Cape, but “a victim of those moonlighti­ng [in] our province and thinking they can create factions, make the Eastern Cape useless, mute it and make sure it does not stand for anything”. Mabuyane said he would not allow this.

“No-one is going to use the Eastern Cape again as voting cows. We are not going to fall for the trick. We have a view, we are a province, we must be heard, we must be understood and respected, as we respect everyone we work with.”

 ?? /Michael Pinyana/Daily Dispatch ?? Beaming: ANC deputy presidenti­al hopeful Oscar Mabuyane, left, laughs with President Cyril Ramaphosa.
/Michael Pinyana/Daily Dispatch Beaming: ANC deputy presidenti­al hopeful Oscar Mabuyane, left, laughs with President Cyril Ramaphosa.

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