General views of the African National Congress (ANC) headquarters Luthuli House in Johannesburg, 9 December 2020. Picture: Michel Bega
ANC branches in the Bojanala region in North West are up in arms after the party’s interim regional committee (IRC) failed to communicate about this weekend’s regional conference – two days before it begins to elect new regional leadership.
Now the grassroots structures are to take it upon themselves to organise the conference as the IRC had failed to do its job.
They also planned to convene branch chairpersons and secretaries throughout the Bojanala in Rustenburg to decide about the way forward regarding the regional conference.
Moses Kotane Ward 1 branch chairperson, Thabo “Arafat” Molamu said the IRC seemed to be failing in its mandate to take the region to the conference.
This despite the fact that 85% of the region’s branches qualified to attend the regional conference. The figure was even way above the 70% threshold required by the ANC national office.
“We don’t have any reason not to hold the conference. What is holding up for us to hold the regional conference because this region was confirmed by the previous Interim Provincial Committee and the current PEC that it had exceeded the threshold.
He said if all failed, as branches they would convene the conference themselves including organising all logistics but they would first report the crisis to Luthuli House for direction.
“We got resources and we can put together the packages for the conference,” Molamu said.
He said instead of organising the conference as per their mandate, the IRC members were busy doing un-mandated task to remove mayors, speakers and whips in various municipalities especially those with whom they do not agree politically.
“Their duty is to take us to the regional conference, but they are not following that mandate, instead they are busy recalling those who do not support them in municipalities.
They are coming up with excuses that they are not ready with logistics for the regional conference. But we know that these are delaying tactics because they fear that should the conference convene, they won’t be elected into the new Regional Executive Committee,” Molamu said.
As branches they were ready for the meeting. The IRC had failed to do its job and therefore it was not their call to postpone it or claim that delegates numbers were not adding up.
“The IRC of Bojanala does not have the mandate of the branches. We are aware they will be defeated at the conference and they hope our delegate mandate would expire so that we start afresh with our branch general meeting,” he said
Molamu wrote letters to the IRC members demanding that they should refrain from interfering with municipal troikas comprising the mayors, speakers and chief whips in the target municipalities. He threatened to take legal action against the IRC if they don’t stop the illegal recalls.
Among those that were targeted for recall was Moses Kotane Local Municipality speaker Gugu Mtshali because she allegedly does not belong to their faction, N12.
Others being targeted Rustenburg Local Municipality mayor, Sheila Mabale-Huma and Madibeng Local Municipality mayor Douglas Maimane but Molamu had been fighting for all of them to be left alone.
Molamu said with only a few days left before the regional conference, no communication had been received by branch executive committees (BECs) about logistics of the conference.
“Nothing is communicated, we hear on the corridors that they plan to postpone it. We know they want to postpone because the conference does not favour them, they will not be elected,” Molamu said.
Branch chairpersons and secretaries would meet in Rustenburg on Friday to plan the convening of the regional conference.
“The ANC cannot be held to ransom by people who don’t have the mandate of the branches. We don’t want to be micromanaged by don’t have support,” Molamu said.
Attempt to get comment from Bojanala IRC regional coordinator, Lebo Ndou failed. Ndou did not respond to our call voice message.
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