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Although the ANC Women’s League is punting Pinky Moloi for the top post, it has expressed its willingness to compromise – as long as the candidate is a woman.
The ANC Women’s League is willing to forego its preferred candidate for the North West premiership in favour of another suitable candidate – as long as it is a woman.
In an interview with City Press this week, women’s league president Bathabile Dlamini said the former mayor of Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality, Pinky Moloi, remained their favourite for the job, but if she lost the race to any other credible female candidate, the league would not oppose the decision.
Dlamini warned that the approach of the ANC should not be one that merely sought to pacify the league by saying: “You said you want a woman, so here is one.”
She said: “We are not going to block those other names if they get support because that was a condition from the national executive committee (NEC) that the person must have support and they must ensure stability in the North West.”
At an NEC meeting earlier this week to finalise premiers for the eight provinces which the ANC governs, the women’s league punted Moloi for the position.
This was after the ANC could produce only two women for the role of the first citizen in the provinces, with Refilwe Mtsweni getting the nod in Mpumalanga and women’s league deputy president Sisi Ntombela continuing to head the Free State.
In the troubled North West the acting premier, Job Mokgoro, is seen by many in the NEC as being politically neutral and unambitious, making him an ideal candidate for the faction-riddled province.
Mokgoro’s appointment followed the ousting of former premier and chairperson Supra Mahumapelo. The move to disband the North West provincial executive committee and to replace it with a task team was widely seen as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s first test of power within the national working committee and the NEC.
The women’s league had, however, taken issue about the lack of female premiers, saying that the ANC must honour its own principle of gender parity.
Two other names that have emerged alongside that of Moloi are Kenetswe Mosenogi, the ANC youth league’s former deputy secretary-general, and MEC Motlalepula Rosho, both of whom have the support of the Ramaphosa group in the province.
Others have punted tourism MEC Desbo Mohono as the ideal candidate, saying she is “independent”.
But alliance structures and ANC veterans in the province were not swayed by the gender parity agenda, saying that what should be a priority was the level of stability that Mokgoro had achieved in government after taking over from Mahumapelo.
Their compromise proposal had been that the provincial ANC prepare for an elective conference as early as June this year, during which a new chairperson, “preferably a woman”, would be elected.
“You leave Mokgoro for the next five years, then they go to conference in July and elect whoever, preferably a woman. Then the person would gradually take over from Mokgoro, who has to retire soon,” said a veteran leader this week.
Ahead of the NEC meeting last weekend there were fears that the decision to submit Mokgoro’s name was not taken by the provincial task team, which agreed during a meeting in Rustenburg last Saturday that it had no mandate to discuss premier candidates because its work was limited to the elections.
However, City Press heard that a later discussion between the task team leaders and the provincial alliance structures produced three names – Mokgoro, Rosho and MEC Saliva Molapisi — resulting in the ANC national working committee agreeing on Mokgoro.
Mokgoro’s supporters have argued that the North West should not be made the sacrificial lamb for the gender parity campaign when other provinces, such as Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, have never had a female premier in 25 years of democracy.
The North West has already had three female premiers in Edna Molewa, Maureen Modiselle and Thandi Modise.
However, a member of the provincial task team said a decision on the premier candidate would have opened the door for the ANC to be challenged in court since the task team did not make any contribution in all the names that were put forward – which is what prompted Ramaphosa to opt for further consultations.
The gender parity campaign was also suspected to be a cover to elevate candidates prepared by the anti-Ramaphosa grouping in the ANC, and that the plot involved an attempt to change the national working committee’s decision on the Limpopo premiership – but it was swiftly squashed.
Dlamini said this week that the league would not oppose any woman candidate and would rather defend the principle of a woman premier in that province.
“Our decision, as the women’s league, was that if you don’t support a particular woman, you had better keep quiet because in the end you are all going to lose if you go out and say you don’t support that woman.”
The ANC had prepared for a hammering at last week’s polls in the North West, which had also been identified as a hot spot by security forces, but fared well, garnering just 5% less of the vote it received back in 2014.
The final tally for the governing party was a decent 62%, in spite of the protests which rocked it last year and the ongoing political instability.
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