Leadership battle in Zuma ’ s backyard
A LAST-minute attempt to avoid a leadership contest in President Jacob Zuma’s home province failed when ANC regional secretaries rejected a proposal to agree on a compromise candidate.
Fearing a fierce leadership contest that had the potential to divide the province, senior party leaders are said to have convened a meeting of regional secretaries on Friday night to discuss the possibility of agreeing on a single candidate to replace outgoing chairman Zweli Mkhize.
This was meant to avoid a contest between education MEC Senzo Mchunu and community safety and liaison MEC Willies Mchunu.
“Secretaries rejected this and said they were carrying a mandate from the branches,” said an ANC leader who attended the meeting.
The leader preferred not to be named as he was not mandated to talk about behind-the-scene horsetrading between party bosses.
Both Mchunus (who are not related) accepted nomination after the proposed deal fell through, setting the stage for an interesting contest. Although voting took place yesterday, the results will only be announced this morning.
ANC chairman in the Moses Mabhida region Alpha Shelembe, who did not attend Friday’s meeting, said a compromise deal would have undermined the party’s democratic processes.
“We must let branches exercise their democratic right,” he said. FOUR years ago Mosiuoa Lekota served “divorce papers ” on the ANC, but now the COPE leader is ready for an extramarital affair with Mamphela Ramphele ’ s Agang.
Lekota has been given the go-ahead by his party s national
’ committee to discuss the terms and conditions of a coalition to fight next year ’ s general election.
Political analysts say that although there are legitimate reasons for the realignment of opposition parties, Lekota's actions are a desperate attempt to save his dead party and his
“” own political career.
Judging by the 2011 local government election results, COPE is unlikely to repeat the impressive 7.4% it achieved in the 2009 general election.
The party's support in 2011
He said no such proposal had been tabled in meetings he attended. The ANC in the province has maintained its unity since before the 2007 Polokwane conference where Zuma defeated his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki.
This unity carried the province to the Mangaung conference in December, where KwaZulu-Natal remained solidly behind Zuma as he trounced his former deputy Kgalema Motlanthe.
But with Zuma serving his last term, cracks are starting to show as leaders reveal their ambitions.
While provincial leaders desperately tried to project a united front, intense lobbying along factional lines was taking place behind the scenes. Both camps were claiming to have the majority be- shrank to just more than 800 000 from more than 1.3 million votes in 2009. The dwindling support has been attributed largely to the leadership battle between Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa.
Lekota has twice met with Ramphele and held discussions with other parties, including the Democratic Alliance, about how to realign the opposition.
He told the Sunday Times that he had a mandate to negotiate with Ramphele and other potential partners. “The issue now is how close that cooperation [is going to be]. Are we going to develop campaign strategies? Is each party going with its own list [to parliament]?” he said.
A political commentator, Songezo Zibi, said Lekota's talks with Ramphele were aimed at saving his own skin.
“Part of that discussion is to fore voting took place last night.
Willies is said to have the backing of eThekwini, the ANC’s biggest region in the province, while the second biggest, Moses Mabhida, supports Senzo. Nine other regions were said to be divided.
A regional chairman, who asked not to be named, said at another meeting of leaders on Friday morning, it had been agreed that no factional songs or placards in support of either candidate would be allowed inside the venue. It seems that message was heeded.
On Friday, Zuma urged delegates to accept the results of the elections for unity’s sake. “The unity is more important than who is at the helm. The ANC is not about fights for positions. It is about sacrifice and commitment.” secure a future for an organisation that is all but dead . . . The majority of COPE votes, anecdotal for me, appeared to have come from the so-called black middle class. That same group is not happy with COPE. To me, they are unlikely to grow at all in the next election. Therefore, aligning with someone who has better credibility than the entire leadership would seem like a logical survival strategy,” he said.
Zibi had a warning for Ramphele: “If I was in her shoes, I'd be extremely cautious about inheriting COPE's problems and factionalism when you're starting a new organisation.”
Another analyst, Mcebisi Ndletyana, said: “Agang is good for COPE, but I'm not sure if COPE is good for Agang. Associating with COPE might tarnish the image of Agang before it is born.”
’ THE government has resubmitted the controversial expropriation bill, backing down on many of its radical proposals — including one that empowered the state to pay less than market value for properties targeted for expropriation.
In the reworked bill, which has been gazetted for public comment, the state also moots the temporary expropriation of property when the government needs land or other property for emergencies.
According to the bill, owners whose properties have been temporarily expropriated for emergencies could have them returned to them once the situation has been stabilised.
The bill has come under severe criticism from civil rights group AfriForum, which said it would erode property rights. Metalworkers’ union Numsa is also not happy with it and has called for the expropriation of land without compensation to fast-track land reform. The disbanded ANC Youth League executive advanced a similar argument.
The bill was withdrawn in parliament in 2008 following vociferous objections by a wide range of stakeholders, who said the legislation was a threat to the free-market economy and would usurp constitutionally enshrined property rights.
The 2008 edition of the bill stated that “an expropriating authority [a minister] may determine an amount of compensation that is below the market value of the property”.
This has been dropped in the reworked version of the bill, which was quietly released for public comment by the Department of Public Works this week after it was approved by the cabinet last week.
The new version says that when determining the amount of compensation to be paid, the minister must not factor in:
That the property has been taken without the consent of the owner;
The special suitability of the property for the purpose for which it is required by the expropriating authority, if it is unlikely that the property would have been purchased for that purpose in an open market; and
Improvements made on the property in question after the date on which the notice of expropriation was served upon the claimant.
The bill compels the state, as the expropriating authority, to produce evidence of how it arrived at a value for property earmarked for expropriation.
Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi, whose department is sponsoring the bill, said it was crucial for the roll-out of the government ’ s multibillion-rand infrastructure development programme.