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Another ANC leadership public spat erupted on Thursday, this time in the President Jacob Zuma-aligned Umkhonto weSizwe military veterans association.
At a media briefing in Johannesburg, four of the association’s top 22 leaders called out national chairperson Kebby Maphatsoe, also deputy minister of defence and military veterans, over “divisive” leadership.
They wanted the ANC to urgently intervene and stop an allegedly “fraudulent” national conference arranged by Maphatsoe, scheduled to kick off on Friday in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.
The ANC said in a separate statement that Zuma would be addressing the conference delegates on Friday.
Among the four were members of the top five officials including Maphatsoe’s deputy, Teenage Monama, general secretary Dumisani Nduli and his deputy Tshidiso Paka.
They were joined by national executive committee member Ike Moroe.
Earlier in the day, MKMVA spokesperson Mangaliso Khonza said that the association was prepared to hold the three-day national conference.
The association would review, amend and direct its constitutional mandate, policies and activities since the last national conference held in 2012, Khonza said.
But Moroe said the planned national conference was “fraudulent”.
“As issues stand, we have it on good authority that about 60% of the more than 700 delegates that were registered on Wednesday do not have ascertainable bona fides as MK military veterans.”
They were in favour of a “joint national conference” that included the MK national council, another group of former MK soldiers who had complained about being excluded from the programmes of the MKMVA.
A preparatory committee under the guidance of ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe had been putting together arrangements for the inclusive conference.
“During that process we covered a lot of ground to bring about the understanding for a common purpose to hold an inclusive MKMVA conference,” Moroe said.
“We still believe that the process is still viable, should the ANC leadership, even at this late hour, make an intervention that favours not any one faction or grouping, but the interest of unity in the movement and its allied formations.”
He said that “a huge number of those veterans who have aligned themselves with the MK national council do not also have any form of representation in the forthcoming MKMVA conference”.
“We hold that it would be incorrect for this conference to be viewed as a constitutional gathering of MKMVA with the powers to elect a new leadership”.
The four “disassociated” themselves from the gathering, adding that they were disappointed with the ANC leadership “in allowing this conference to take place amid this cloud of wrongdoing”.
“That can only serve to tarnish the name of our movement the ANC with an undesirable factional posture,” said Moroe.
