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Andile Lili, the controversial ANC Western Cape activist famous for leading a protest campaign of dumping human excrement in government buildings, is emerging as a dark horse in the race for provincial secretary of the party.
Six ANC members have told City Press Lili was lobbying and also being lobbied for the position of provincial secretary at the ANC’s Western Cape elective conference to be held from June 25 to 27 in Cape Town.
Asked to comment on the possibility, Lili was noncommittal.
“I will cross that bridge when I get there,” he said when asked about whether he would stand if nominated.
He led a poo-throwing campaign at the Cape Town International Airport in protest against the city’s use of portable toilets in informal settlements.
In February, Lili was one of nine members of the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement who were found guilty by the courts of contravening the Civil Aviation Act for dumping faeces at the airport in June 2013.
Lili has not been sentenced yet, but contravening the Civil Aviation Act is considered a serious offence, which carries a minimum sentence of up to 15 years.
City Press has seen SMSes from different factions, including one from a faction that wants Lili to become the provincial secretary of the ANC.
The slate touted on the SMS also features current ANC chairperson Marius Fransman continuing in that position and proposes that the controversial former mayor of Beaufort West, Truman Prince, be elected provincial treasurer.
Fransman would neither confirm nor deny that ANC members were lobbying him or Lili, saying only that ANC branches were still busy with the nominations process. He added that there was nothing barring Lili from contesting a position in the ANC if the branches wanted him.
“Anyone can stand as long as the structures of the ANC want you and as long as they comply with the rules and regulations of the [ANC’s] constitution,” he said.
“At this point in time, we don’t know who is standing or not. Branches are still making nominations. He must meet the minimum requirement of 25% of branches to be nominated.
“If his name comes up and there is compliance, then he has got the right to stand,” said Fransman.
Fransman, whose leadership collective was elected under controversial circumstances in February 2011, looks set to retain the Western Cape ANC chairmanship, according to provincial sources.
The Western Cape is the only province where the ANC is in opposition.
Speaking to City Press about his four years at the helm, Fransman said: “We took over a fragmented ANC, an ANC that was coming from years of public infighting, an ANC that was extremely unstable where we had moved from 46% in 2004 right down to 31% in 2009.
“We took over an ANC that was battling with itself,” he said.
His critics argue, however, that the ANC is at its lowest point in the province and that, instead of building the branches, their numbers have shrunk under his leadership.
The ANC won 31.6% of the vote in the April 2009 elections, securing almost 621 000 votes in the province and getting 14 seats in the Western Cape provincial legislature. This was almost a year after the ANC controversially fired its former premier Ebrahim Rasool, whose supporters joined the breakaway Congress of the People in droves
