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Young Lions embark on a power strip show in provinces

Young Lions embark on a power strip show in provinces

The ANC Youth League’s national leaders are not sitting around waiting for the outcome of their disciplinary hearings. In fact, after a bold and cunning move, they are now remote-controlling the league’s biggest province in an effort to get their way in 2012. CARIEN DU PLESSIS reports that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

On Monday they promised they won’t disband KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial ANC Youth League leadership, and on Wednesday the League’s national leaders kept their promise by removing the province’s powers instead.

In essence the stripping of powers has the same effect of disbandment.

The disciplinary hearing of Youth League leader Julius Malema and his fellow leaders, set to continue on 6 to 8 October, has seen the League trying to shore up support for its president in the provinces, should his case have to go on appeal to the ANC’s national executive committee. Meanwhile his detractors in the ANC have, on the other side, been hard at work lobbying support for his ousting.

In the event that Malema is suspended from the League, he would want to position the provinces in such a way that they would elect his choice of leader to succeed him – and to ultimately lead the charge to oust President Jacob Zuma and ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe at Mangaung next year.

The League’s national leaders have accused the KwaZulu-Natal leaders of speaking out about the ANC’s succession battle prematurely.

It’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, really, because a handful of Malema’s supporters showed up with posters declaring that they wanted Deputy President Kgelama Motlanthe to lead the party from the end of next year onwards, yet nothing much came of that in the way of discipline.

Still, the ANCYL’s national leaders must have had their reasons. The province’s chairman Mthandeni Dlungwane (Zuma’s nephew) and the deputy secretary Sboniso Duma are Zuma supporters, while the provincial secretary, Bheki Mtolo, is a Malema ally.

This leaves the provincial executive committee (PEC) somewhat divided. For one, they did not send supporters to protest in Johannesburg at the start of Malema’s hearing last month.

Former provincial deputy chairman Sindiso Magaqa – another Malema ally – is now the League’s national secretary-general and his post is vacant.

Dlungwane has vowed that the province would fight the League’s national leaders, saying they had no right to strip the province of its powers.

The League’s national working committee took the decision on the disbandment, and communicated the decision to the province by letter on Tuesday.

The provincial leadership has blamed League spokesman Floyd Shivambu, a deployee to the province, whose views that a new leader should replace Zuma next year have reportedly been rejected by the province.

Although the province’s leaders don’t really have the option of fighting their loss of power (the League recently added a new clause to its constitution saying that those who approached the courts on internal disputes would summarily be suspended, while the ANC’s national leaders usually have a hands-off approach to the League’s internal disputes), insiders on Wednesday said the League was foolish to mess with such a big province – KwaZulu-Natal has 72,427 out of a total of 366,435 audited League members.

The province could lobby other provinces to start a grassroots revolt against the national leadership.

League insiders said that the Eastern Cape, which isn’t fully united behind Malema either and is the second biggest province, the North West, and Gauteng (which is headed by Lebogang Maile, who challenged Malema’s leadership at the League’s conference in June) could be the next to face the League’s axe.

The disbanding of provincial executive committees is a fairly common occurrence within the Youth League, with the most recent having been the disbandment of the Eastern Cape leadership shortly before the province’s conference in July last year (after several botched attempts to hold the gathering, with divisions in the party so bad that the leadership couldn’t even agree on a venue).

Two months before that the Western Cape leadership was disbanded, also because it failed to call its conference in time.

This province is now set to have its conference some time in October.

So far two leaders from rural regions, Luvo Makasi (George) and Jonton Snyman (Boland) have emerged as possible candidates for chairman, and provincial factions seem to count more than national ones in the race.

The two both belong to the camp of provincial ANC leader, Marius Fransman, who is said to be increasingly behind Zuma (speculation is that he got into his current position earlier this year with sports minister Fikile Mbalula’s support), but former provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha is said to be trying to gain influence again. He has never been in the Zuma camp.

Snyman, however, is set to argue that his leadership could help the league win back coloured support in the province, which is now ruled by the DA.

Loyiso Nkohla, who led the campaign against the installation of open toilets by the DA-run Cape Town in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, is favoured by the metro’s Dullah Omar region to become secretary.

In the North West, the ANC seems intent at weakening Malema’s hand by disciplining one of his biggest allies, provincial ANC secretary Kabelo Mataboge, who is also on the League’s national executive committee.

Mataboge was responsible for a botch-up before the May local government elections which saw the party failing to register candidates in seven wards.

Provincial ANC spokesman Kenny Morolong said the action was only decided on by the provincial working committee about a week ago.

“It took so long because there has been an investigation, but the provincial working committee has now put the report in front of the disciplinary committee,” he said.

He added that there had been undue delays in the investigation, but declined to expand on it.

Things have also been in disarray in Malema’s home Limpopo province. Although it’s the League’s third biggest province in terms of numbers, the adults have been leaving the ANC at a worrying pace. This in a province that has seen voting percentages for the ANC exceed 80% in most previous elections.

Mantashe, in a recent NEC report, expressed concern about the numbers, and stopped short of saying that the provincial conference, brought forward by six months to December, should not happen because of the state of the branches.

The fight is likely to get much dirtier before it clears up again, if at all. DM



Read more:

  • ANC can easily fix Youth League problem – here’s how, in Daily Maverick;
  • As Mantashe warns of implosions, Youth League plans revolt in October, in Daily Maverick.

Photo: REUTERS

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