Mayor jumps before he is pushed

The Makana Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) which is made up the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), Young Communist League (YCL) and South African Students Congress (Sasco) is calling for the removal of Makana executive mayor Phumelelo Kate from the council.

In a joint briefing at <i>Grocott’s Mail<i> offices on Friday, the group called for Kate’s “immediate recall or redeployment” on the grounds that he failed the youth of Makana “dismally”.

The PYA alleged that several attempts to meet with Kate to address several issues pertaining to youth development "fell on deaf ears".“We also feel we know that he is involved somehow with the Shikota party, and his wife Phumeza has publicly displayed and pledged support for the party,” said ANCYL convenor Siphiwo Shoba.

Also present during the briefing were ANCYL co-ordinator Lungile Klaas, YCL co-ordinator Luyanda Sakata and Sasco’s task-team head Bongani Hanise.

Shoba said the alliance in the Makana sub-region held an extended meeting on Thursday where the issue of ANC representatives on the Makana Council who are associated with the activities of the newly-formed Congress of the People (Cope) was extensively discussed.

“It is this collective’s (PYA) view that they are abusing municipal offices and resources to organise for the Shikota and therefore such counter-revolutionary tendencies stop here and now,” he explained.

“We ask for their immediate suspension pending a disciplinary hearing or rather [for them to]tender their resignations with immediate effect,” he demanded.He alleged that Cope members were claiming to walk the “moral high ground” by accusing the ANC of being corrupt, lacking democratic values and deviating from the Freedom Charter.

Shoba asked: “Is it not moral then to resign from their positions as councillors as they were deployed by the very same ANC that today they are turning against solely for their selfish interests and greed?”
However, ANC secretary in the Cacadu region Ten-ten Pikinini said he was not aware of this call as none of the party’s alliance partners in Makana raised the issue of ANC deployees who are taking part in Cope activities.

He said the issue was not discussed during the party’s extended regional executive committee meeting which was held on Friday.He said that only the party’s election strategy and internal listing processes were discussed at the meeting. "We explained to the sub-regional leaders how the listing processes are going to unfold for nominations of parliamentarians," he said.

He said all the party’s 59 branches in the region will nominate candidates. The list of candidates will then be taken to the provincial list conference, the resolutions of which will in turn be tabled during the national list conference.

"We are still waiting for the national executive committee for an announcement about the listing processes and, possibly, dates of the upcoming conferences," he said. He said that over the weekend he attended a rally in Ndlambe Municipality where "5 000 ANC members rose in defence of the ANC’s soul which is under attack from self-centred individuals."

"However, no individual is bigger than the ANC, and without it they will be nothing. The ANC cannot ever be hurt by any person," he maintained.

Kate denied failing Makana youth and said that he had met with ANCYL and Sasco before the Youth Summit in September. "The summit which they attended was called to address their concerns, how can they attend the summit and then say its objectives were not met?"

He also challenged the group to produce evidence that he attended a Cope meeting. "I haven’t attended any Cope meeting as I’m a loyal member of the ANC," he said.

Meanwhile, Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) Reverend Mvuleni Mvula told <i>Grocott’s<i> that a Proportional Representation councillor may be replaced by a political party after he or she had resigned, or was expelled.

He, however, said that a by-election would be held after a ward councillor’s resignation or expulsion.