Pretoria - The ANC chairperson of the Electoral Committee (EC) and former president Kgalema Motlanthe has come out guns blazing against a Limpopo factional meeting to convince the committee to work in the CR17’s campaign’s favour, calling it shocking and disappointing.
The former president said last week’s meeting, which was used as a platform by the supporters of President Cyril Ramaphosa to lobby for mayoral positions and accuse their so-called RET rivals of taking over the City of Polokwane, had left him “deeply shocked, disappointed and extremely unhappy”.
This was revealed in leaked audio messages of the Zoom meeting, heard by the Pretoria News.
Present at the secret meeting that appeared to be chaired by ANC Veterans League (ANCVL) president Snuki Zikalala was Motlanthe and EC national list co-ordinator Chief Livhuwani Matsila – who were invited to the meeting by the league.
Also present were Vhembe regional secretary, advocate Anderson Mudunungu; the region’s deputy chairperson, Vhembe District Municipality Executive Mayor Dowelani Nenguda; Capricorn District Municipality executive assistant Rakgadi Machaba; and provincial chairperson of the ANCVL and former MEC of agriculture Jacob Marule.
In the audio, Mudunungu can be heard making a plea to Motlanthe and Matsila for the Vhembe ANC region to go into conference before the November local government elections.
“The REC (Regional Executive Committee) has overstayed and we have reached 70% threshold; there is a huge outcry that it is those under the VBS stigma that are contesting.
“We are asking that the NEC assume responsibilities to choose mayors, and as secretary of the region and the deputy chairperson of the region I share those sentiments,” Mudunungu said.
Machaba, who made the presentation on behalf of the CR17 faction in Peter Mokaba Region could be heard saying: “We are so disappointed that the RET (Radical Economic Transformation) forces have been deployed to Polokwane municipality. Polokwane was the only municipality serving CR17 forces and now we are left with nothing and want to just remind you that in the top 10 of the Polokwane lost there are no CR17 members there. We are asking ourselves: are we allowing the municipality to just be run by forces while we have capable comrades?”
She was referring to newly-appointed mayor John Mpe as the City’s number one citizen.
The CR17 forces are believed to be the faction aligned to Ramaphosa, while the RET forces are those that support former President Jacob Zuma in their rivalry.
However, in a leaked report presented to the party’s national executive committee (NEC) on Friday, Motlanthe would have none of it. The report reads in part: “A very disturbing example of factionalism was that, as chair of the EC, I was invited to a Zoom meeting with the ANCVL in Limpopo on September 10. I gladly accepted as it was my duty and I invited Chief Matsila.
“To our surprise comrades who are not members of the VL such as the regional secretary (Nenguda) and secretary (Dunungu) were in the meeting without the regional chair or his apology. There was also a female comrade (Machaba), who appeared to be too young to be a veteran. As these comrades presented their issues under the pretext of a meeting with the veterans, it became clear that this meeting was being abused to lobby for certain comrades to occupy mayoral positions in the Capricorn District.”
The report continued: “Both the veterans and their associates in the meeting were accusing other senior ANC comrades of being RET forces. The factional postures and sentiments expressed at the meeting left us deeply shocked, disappointed and extremely unhappy, so we had to set the record straight and denounce factional tendencies.”
Meanwhile, the ANC Youth League in Vhembe has called for the region to suspend Mudunungu.
“We urge the regional executive committee of the ANC in Vhembe to suspend and excuse him from his duties as regional secretary since he has been advocating that his own term of office has lapsed and he has lost confidence in himself as the REC leader,” they said.
Mudunungu told the Pretoria News: “I’m too young to be a member of the Veterans League."
Nenguda and Marule could not be reached for comment.
Pretoria News