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ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has overruled the North West ANC provincial executive committee’s decision to make new councillors sign postdated resignation letters.
It is one of several interventions he has made against the executive led by Supra Mahumapelo.
These include halting the intended suspension of a regional leader.
At a recent general council in the Bojanala region, Mantashe put a brake on the North West leader’s push for councillors to sign postdated resignation letters.
Mantashe’s firm hand with the province has fuelled perceptions that he is on the warpath with Mahumapelo, who is in the so-called Premier League with Free State premier Ace Magashule and Mpumalanga premier DD Mabuza. The trio are seen to be positioning themselves as kingmakers for the ANC’s upcoming succession race in 2017.
Mantashe told the general council that the resignation proposal was not ANC policy.
Mahumapelo defended it on the grounds that it was a resolution taken by branch delegates at the previous party provincial conference.
ANC councillors had objected to the resignation letters on the basis that they would be deemed fired, but without a fair hearing, if they disagreed with any party decision.
Disgruntled ANC councillors also interpreted these resignation letters as an attempt by Mahumapelo to have the councillors beholden to him and his executive.
Having lost the battle, provincial secretary Dakota Legoete said this week the instruction was put in abeyance until the ANC’s next national policy conference.
He said the proposal “affects the policy of the ANC and, therefore, in order to get passed, it must get the support of the entire body”.
The ruling party in North West had also pushed to suspend Bojanala regional secretary Tokyo Mataboge, pending the finalisation of his disciplinary hearing.
But Mantashe said this would have amounted to promoting “mob justice”.
“Precautionary suspension should be based on the fact that his or her presence will obstruct the investigation. You do not wake up and say, ‘We are taking a resolution to suspend so and so.’ It is wrong,” said Mantashe, adding that “even if the provincial executive committee was of that view, it will delegate a team to work on the details”.
“We cannot sit in a big structure and say so-and-so must be fired. That is mob justice.”
He described the North West province as infested with factionalism to the extent that “on any matter there will be two groups”.
Legoete this week refused to comment on the Mataboge matter on the grounds that, as provincial secretary, he was the complainant in the disciplinary case brought by the provincial executive body.
Mantashe said this week that, as the secretary- general, he was “not a pawn. I do not do things on the basis of how the most arrogant group in the province thinks. I must tell them the truth and only the truth. If it is a short cut, it is my job to say, ‘Do not take short cuts in these matters.’”
He said that people who wanted to fight a battle with the Premier League “must have time and energy to do that. I do not fight those imaginary battles.”
However, said Mantashe, “if there is a faction in the ANC that must be fought, I will fight it. In the case of North West, it does not apply.”
In the past two weeks, the ANC national working committee spent time listening to the views of ANC branch members in the four regions of North West.
Legoete said this week the visit was “normal”, as it had also happened in other provinces, including the Free State, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
“The national working committee is a full-time structure that runs the ANC on a daily basis. They had come to inspect the state of the organisation,” he said.
“The national structure is allowed to go and make an inspection in lower structures.”
North West is among the smallest provinces of the ANC in terms of membership. But last year, Mahumapelo managed to win the lobby for the positions of president in the ANC Youth League and the secretary-general in the ANC Women’s League as a result of collaboration with the Free State and Mpumalanga.
Three provincial government departments in North West – health, education and public works – have been under the administration of the provincial treasury, although a provincial MEC told City Press that the administration was “largely partial”.
