THE ANC in Ekurhuleni has been rocked by complaints over the selection of its mayoral candidates ahead of the municipality’s first council meeting on Thursday.
Angry ANC members continued to descend on the party’s head office to complain about the manipulation of the councillor candidate selection process.
In Ekurhuleni, ANC Women’s League ward 56 branch secretary Thabisa Makapaka said the party’s Ekurhuleni leadership was too factional.
“The guidelines of the ANC were very clear in terms of mayoral candidates. They said two females and one male but what they did they forwarded two males and one female. This means they are not taking the ANC seriously, they act as if they are bigger than the organisation,” she said.
According to Makapaka, the Ekurhuleni mayoral candidates are current mayor and regional chairperson Mzwandile Masina, deputy chairperson Jongisizwe Dlabathi and Nomadlozi Nkosi, who was mayoral committee member responsible for sports, recreation, arts and culture before the local government elections.
“We also have other females who are competent to lead and who meet the requirements and have all the qualifications but because of their factional tendencies they decided to exclude and isolate them,” she said.
Makapaka added that ANC branches in the Ekurhuleni region have disputes but the party told them to campaign for it to win the municipal polls.
”What we want is for the interviews to be halted and go back to the disputes and attend them so that the process becomes fair because it was totally unfair,” she explained.
Another ANC member in Ekurhuleni Kutloano Rakosa said they did not want to wait long for a response from the party as the municipality’s first council meeting was scheduled for Thursday.
”We should get our response before Thursday. The latest that we can get a response is Thursday morning. We must be told what is going to happen on Thursday morning to the appeals we have submitted,” he said.
In Mpumalanga, Thembinkosi Dlamini, an ANC member in ward two in the Dipaleseng local municipality, told Independent Media that before the municipal poll, they had submitted disputes about what he described as fraud in the candidate selection process.
”The ANC’s processes were not followed thoroughly and then they selected candidates not according to the vote of the community,” he said.
Dlamini said in Dipaleseng the community was not involved in selecting ANC candidates.
”Instead, some people who have the ANC in their pockets selected their friends, who are implicated in corruption in the previous administration,” he said.
Dlamini threatened that ANC members would stop the inauguration of the mayor if their complaints were not resolved.
In its response, the ANC has promised to finalise all disputes relating to its councillor candidates selection process lodged before the November 1 local government elections by the end of this month.
ANC official Mandla Qwane said the party’s electoral committee chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe would resolve the disputes by the end of November.
Qwane was speaking outside Luthuli House, where angry ANC members from Ekurhuleni and Dipaleseng in Mpumalanga delivered complaints about manipulation of candidate selection process and removal of candidates chosen by communities.
”By-elections will be held where disputes arise and it is proven candidates lists were manipulated,” he said.
loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za
POLITICAL BUREAU