Three names in the hat to fill North West premier post

North West will have a new premier as early as Thursday after the ANC national working committee (NWC) was instructed to fill the long-vacant position.

The NWC was mandated by the ANC national executive committee (NEC) at its special meeting in Irene yesterday to take a decision on the premier candidate by Thursday.

The decision would end a stalemate about who should succeed former premier Supra Mahumapelo, who resigned recently and became an ordinary member of the North West provincial legislature.

There were fears that should the ANC fail to fill the position within 30 days after Mahumapelo left, as required by the constitution, a constitutional crisis could ensue, forcing the disbandment of the provincial executive council.

It was also rumoured that the government deliberately delayed to install Mahumapelo’s successor so that it could find an excuse to intervene politically in the province and take over the administration.

The names submitted to the ANC head office as premier candidates were provincial speaker Susan Dantjie, former provincial director-general Job Mokgoro, and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa.

The ANC tripartite alliance partners – the SACP, Cosatu and the South African National Civic Organisation – had proposed the name of ANC stalwart Zakes Tolo, but the ANC provincial executive committee (PEC) excluded Tolo in the final list.

This has angered ANC allies who accused the PEC of deliberately ignoring names they submitted.

“The ANC did not include Tolo although his name was common among all the three alliance partners. This is deliberate, they just want to frustrate us,” a senior alliance member said yesterday.

Besides Tolo, other names ANC allies proposed were those of Sello Lehare, who is ANC deputy provincial chairperson and MEC for education, and Jerry Matjila, SA ambassador to the United Nations.

Finance MEC Wendy Nelson is acting premier and was anointed by Mahumapelo into the position prior to his resignation.

If President Cyril Ramaphosa’s trend to appoint women as premiers – as happened in the Free State with Sisi Ntombela and Mpumalanga’s Refiloe Mtshweni – is anything to go by, Dantjie and Molewa stand a good chance to take over.

But an ANC source in North West said Molewa, who served as premier from 2004 to 2009, might withdraw from the race.

The new premier is expected to be sworn into the new position either on Thursday or just before the sitting of the provincial legislature on Friday.

The call for Mahumapelo to resign began with protests that were accompanied by looting and burning of property around Mahikeng where residents were demanding service delivery.

The rioting subsided after Ramaphosa dispatched an interministerial task team, led by Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to intervene to stabilise the provincial administration.

In a surprise move yesterday, the NEC endorsed the Free State’s newly elected PEC, despite its being elected on a factional basis. The PEC was opposed by the disgruntled ANC members in the province who claimed that it was comprised of former provincial chair Ace Magashule’s supporters.

ALSO READ: Rumours fly thick and fast as Supra hangs on

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