|
|
South Africa: Police Fire Tear Gas As ANC Battle for Power Turns Nasty
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Business Day (Johannesburg)
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008
Hajra Omarjee
Johannesburg
CHAOS erupted at an African National Congress (ANC) meeting in North West yesterday, with police firing rubber bullets and tear-gassing delegates.
This was after angry delegates briefly hijacked a truck, in apparent frustration at delays in registration.
The chaos disrupted registration further at the conference, which has already seen a casualty in Premier Edna Molewa, who did not get enough votes from the branches to defend her chair.
The conference eventually got under way , but deployed ANC national executive committee (NEC) members had a crisis on their hands when police used rubber bullets and tear gas against delegates.
The scenes at Sun City were reminiscent of the ANC Youth League's national conference in Bloemfontein last month, where a similar registration crisis caused tempers to reach boiling point, drawing heavy criticism from ANC elders.
In both meetings leadership contests were at the heart of tensions as delegates left outside felt their preferred candidate was being cheated out of votes.
The ANC's national presidential succession race has set the framework for continued jostling for positions at provincial level ahead of next year's general election.
Six other ANC provincial structures and the ANC Women's League are to hold elective conferences ahead of the party's national list conference later this year.
The list indaba will ultimately determine who is chosen to represent the party in Parliament and provincial legislatures after next year's election.
The leadership dispute in North West became so messy that NEC members had to judge disputes on Saturday over the results of branch general meetings.
The conference also saw the first major defeat at provincial level of people aligned to President Thabo Mbeki after Polokwane, where Mbeki was beaten by Jacob Zuma for the presidency of the party.
Molewa could not gain the required threshold of 25% of branch nominations and his fate will signal a warning to premiers Thabang Makwetla (Mpumalanga), Sello Moloto (Limpopo) and S'bu Ndebele (KwaZulu-Natal).
They are all aligned to Mbeki and so risk losing their party provincial chairmanships and becoming lame-duck premiers.
With Molewa's nomination having fallen flat, two dominant factions in North West, one led by provincial secretary Supra Mahumapelo and the other by Klerksdorp mayor China Dodovu, are expected to go head-to-head in the leadership election.
Acknowledging that the North West conference had "stalled", the party's provincial leadership yesterday accused conspirators of "sabotage".
|
The North West congress is scheduled to end today.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
