Struggle to death over ANC burial plan By ZIMASA MATIWANE and APHIWE DEKLERK

● A new struggle is brewing at the ANC’s Luthuli House headquarters — this time not over positions, but over who came up with the idea to form an internal burial society, and the control of insurance proceeds.

A Durban-based insurance practitioner and a Midrand businessman claim they were sidelined when the party’s new funeral policy scheme was announced this week.

Andisani Mkhwanazi, the grandson of controversial BEE pioneer, the late Don Mkhwanazi, says he alerted the ANC to the idea of establishing its own policy. He said he was stunned when he saw the news that the ANC had established a funeral cover scheme without his knowledge.

And ANC member and Midrand businessman Surprise Seema said he made a presentation that would have seen his insurance company, Bataung Life Insurance, forming a partnership with the ANC funeral scheme.

However, it has emerged that the scheme will be underwritten by Constantia Life and Health Assurance Co Ltd, a white-owned company.

Seema wants the ANC to explain why he was excluded from the business venture. “We are card-carrying members of the ANC, we operate in the same space, but when it’s time to benefit, they give it to white-owned companies,” he said.

Mkhwanazi told the Sunday Times he first approached ANC leaders in KwaZulu-Natal with the idea, and that a “draft proposal” was submitted to the party’s provincial office in 2014. In 2015, a revised version was sent to members of the Progressive Youth in Business, a forum based at Luthuli House.

Mkhwanazi said he communicated with Dolly Tryon, an official in former treasurergeneral Zweli Mkhize’s office at Luthuli House, in 2016. Tryon told the Sunday Times she did not recall the engagement.

Mkhwanazi’s scheme would have been called Amandla Wethu and would offer basic funeral cover, which would pay up to R50,000, with a monthly premium of R425.

But a “script” prepared by the ANC to be used by its call-centre agents states that its policy is only for ANC members and supporters, and its maximum cover is R15,000.

ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe dismissed the complaints, saying the funeral scheme was an old idea and had not been stolen.

“The ANC should not be patronised for taking decisions that are in the interest of its own because of a colour scare,” he said.