Eastern Cape ANC chair Oscar Mabuyane has called for “decisive” action against those responsible for alleged manipulation of the party’s candidate lists, as the failure to register candidates in four provincial municipalities threatens to ignite a legal and political war at the top of the governing party.
In his first media interview since the crisis erupted, Mabuyane said the party could not treat the debacle as an administrative mishap or technical error.
“It is catastrophic,” he said.
Mabuyane called into question the role of the secretariat in the manipulation of the list, arguing that the names released by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) differed from the list endorsed by ANC structures. The party is left with no choice but to establish who had made the changes and under what authority.
“There were leaders there; the SGO [secretary-general’s office] was there, not only the SG [Fikile Mbalula], the first DSG [Nomvula Mokonyane] was there. She is the one who called regional secretaries to come to ensure proper lists are done.
“Now we know, because the IEC has released the list, that the list was tampered with — manipulated, in simplest terms — because these are not lists that were endorsed by the NEC [national executive committee].
“The issue is about ill-discipline. The ANC must deal with this matter, deal with it decisively and effectively. It must teach everybody who accepts the responsibility of leading the ANC to understand that that responsibility is not something you can just easily play with.”
The Eastern Cape ANC is facing one of its gravest electoral crises after candidate lists were not submitted in time for four municipalities. The party pinned its hopes on legal action but Mabuyane conceded that failure would carry severe political consequences.
“It is a huge blow, seriously catastrophic,” he said.
Mabuyane’s intervention places renewed pressure on the national secretariat, including secretary-general Mbalula, and Eastern Cape provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi, who are locked in an increasingly bitter public dispute.
Mabuyane was adamant that responsibility should not be shifted to the NEC or the provincial executive committee (PEC). Answers have to come from the administrative machinery of the organisation — from regional structures to national headquarters.
Eastern Cape provincial structures had completed their list process a week before the August 28 deadline, giving those responsible for submitting the documents ample time to meet the IEC’s requirements.
According to Mabuyane, the province’s list had already been elevated to national level by the time of the final NEC meeting before the deadline.
“When our list was taken to the NEC meeting — the last meeting on Thursday preceding Friday, which was the deadline — our list was already at national level, idling to be registered,” he said. “That is why we are all shocked by all the manoeuvring and tampering.”
Regional chairs had been removed from the list and demanded an explanation of how that could have happened, he said, accusing unnamed party leaders of putting personal alliances and factional interests above the organisation.
He described the crisis as due to an extraordinary act of defiance of the party’s rules and collective authority.
“We have never seen a situation where we demonstrate anarchy at the level that we see now, where people are clearly showing the ANC the middle finger, where people are no longer scared of the ANC.”
Mabuyane’s comments follow a report by Mbalula that details material discrepancies between candidate lists endorsed by party structures and those eventually captured for the electoral system.
The report, seen by the Sunday Times, identifies 34 material changes in the Eastern Cape list. These include:
- five outright removals;
- 11 insertions;
- 16 replacements; and
- two significant changes in candidate ranking.
The report also says Ngcukayitobi submitted the province’s final list to the ANC operations centre only 29 minutes before the IEC deadline. It raises concerns that an NEC-approved list may have been altered without a mandate.
That allegation has triggered an explosive response from Ngcukayitobi, whose lawyers have sent Mbalula a scathing letter demanding a retraction and apology.
Ngcukayitobi has accused Mbalula of falsely seeking to pin blame for the Eastern Cape’s failure to submit crucial municipal candidate lists on him. He has further alleged that Mbalula instructed him to tamper with the lists.
Mabuyane declined to single out one of the two administrators, saying both were present during the registration process and had an obligation to disclose what they knew. — Sunday Times