MBOMBELA – Public faction fights in the ruling party heated up this week when the ANC condemned comments made by party members Dr Mathews Phosa and Mr Ronald Lamola at the Joe Slovo memorial lecture in Middelburg as being “provocative”.
The South African Communist Party’s (SACP) annual lecture at last took place on Sunday of last week after being postponed twice in the past month. The original lecture was supposed to be held in KaNyamazane on January 24, where Phosa, the former treasurer general of the party and a former premier of Mpumalanga along with SACP provincial chairman, Mr Bonakele Majuba, were due to speak. It was disrupted by a violent clash between ANC and SACP supporters.
Premier and ANC provincial chairman Mr David Mabuza said at a press briefing later that there were no problems between the two parties, but with Majuba. “Every time he opens his mouth he will insult me. He has called me a corrupt person, a killer and a spy.”
During the lecture Majuba said, “When a gang-style mafia wants to take the ANC astray, I am going to defend the ANC, as much as I am also going to defend the SACP.”
Last year Phosa passed on a report claiming Mabuza was an apartheid spy to the ANC’s national executive council (NEC). Mabuza accused him of writing and leaking the report to the press, which he denied. During the lecture Phosa condemned factionalism in the party.
“If we fail to resolve the problems on the ground in Mpumalanga, we are going to find it hard to fight the local government elections. We are calling on all leaders in the province, together comrades let us find solutions.”
Lamola, a former youth-league deputy president also took to the stage in Middelburg. “It looks like there is this chairperson who is more powerful than the entire NEC of the ANC. Why is the ANC not intervening in the province with clear evidence of a despot? Even PW Botha was not worse than what we have today. What we have today is a clear repeat of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire.”
The ANC’s national spokesman Mr Zizi Kodwa issued a statement on Tuesday in which the party called on the two ANC members to refrain from making inflammatory statements “that may undermine the political process underway in Mpumalanga. We consider their utterances highly provocative and we raise issue with their conduct as ANC members”.
He said ANC secretary general, Mr Gwede Mantashe, had met with the provincial structures of the ANC and SACP numerous times. A team of ANC veterans had also been appointed to investigate the KaNyamazane incident and the root cause of disunity.
Mbombela councillor and member of the mayoral committee, Mr Bheki Zulu, had been arrested on a charge of malicious damage to property related to the incident.
The party called on members to refrain from making inflammatory statements that might undermine the political process underway. “Whatever views comrades have about the ANC leadership, this must never erode the discipline expected from ANC members,” Kodwa said.
- Read more on the disagreement between the incumbent and former premier here.
