Politics.za

The Eastern Cape branch of the ANC has publicly come out in support of the scrapping of legislation allowing floor crossing I’m sure to the delight of opposition parties.

The Eastern Cape branch is considered to be quite influential in the ANC, being the traditional ‘spiritual homeland’ of the Xhosa dominated ANC. However some of their recent actions seem to be be little more than attention grabbers, witness their proclamation that President Thabo Mbeki be allowed to rule for a third term. I hope this is not the case this time.

DA Eastern Cape Provincial Leader Athol Trollip has announced (via email so no links as of yet) that he is running for DA National Leader once Tony Leon retires in May. From his announcement it seems he plans to aggressively target disillusioned ANC voters

I plan to lead an offensive into this constituency that will accelerate the growth of our party and directly threaten the ANC hegemony over government outside of the Western Cape. There is a growing movement of disillusioned former ANC voters who feel that they have been duped and let down by the current government. I will take the DA’s message of freedom and opportunity directly to these South Africans with a passion and determination that has never before been seen in the DA.

Besides Joe Seremane, Trollip would be my choice for leader of the DA. According to what I’ve read he is fluent in isiXhosa and the lack of DA leadership who speak isiXhoza, isiZulu or Sesotho is something that I’v harped on about in the past. He is also leader in the Eastern Cape and so has lots of experience in an ANC dominated government and it’s workings (or in the case of the Eastern Cape, it’s non-workings).

I expect we might see a few more announcements by DA leadership candidates in the coming weeks. I expect at least Joe Seremane and Theuns Botha to run as well.

This is quite a change after trying to divine the intentions of the candidates for the ANC leadership for the past few months.

Has there been a congress by a member of the tripartite alliance that has not ended in bickering and threats of total collapse? If not then the the ANC Youth League congress is going exactly as expected. Nothing says ‘well run organisation’ than the threat of having to shut down one of your key provincial branches for ‘weak leadership’. That’s the official line, their support for Thabo Mbeki might have been a bit more relevant.

Yikes! The Eastern Cape provincial government can not account for 88.5% of it’s budget. Of the total budget of R34.1 billion for 2005/6, R30.2 billion is unaccounted for.

Despite being it’s ‘ancestral homeland’ and pouring lots of money into the area the Eastern Cape continues to be a problem child for the ANC. ANC infighting is so rife that three of the six largest municipalities still do not have mayors(!) despite municipal elections being held six months ago. It took less than a month for the DA to rustle up a very politically diverse coalition to elect Helen Zille as mayor of Cape Town, while the Eastern Cape ANC branch can’t decide amongst themselves who to choose without the ensuing screaming match.

It’s getting so bad Thabo Mbeki has to personally fly down and hand out a few verbal snotklaps to try and get everyone to do what they were elected to do.

The Eastern Cape is the spiritual home of the ANC. It’s where it was born, grew to prominence and also where a lot of it’s current leadership, including Thabo Mbeki (but not Jacob Zuma) can trace their roots. Which is why it might be a bit disconcerting for the ANC national leadership to learn that the ANC Eastern Cape provincial is about to adopt a position paper stating that party is being taken over by “rightwing forces hostile to transformation”.

This might be the result of Zuma’s supporters using the provinces as a means to put pressure on the national ANC leadership, although the Eastern Cape ANC is keeping a door open for a “compromise candidate”. This also comes as some in the tripartite alliance claim that the executive branch has too much power, although as SomeAmongus points out, this was power that was seemingly given up freely when it suited them. COSATU have also decided that they don’t like the proportional representation electoral system anymore and would prefere a constituency based approach to be integrated into the process. That’s probably one of the few times COSATU and Tonly Leon agree on something.

Helen Zille is not the only female political leader going on a firing spree. Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela (aka the ‘barefoot premier’) has fired both the provincial ministers for health and economic affairs.

The Eastern Cape certainly needs a kick in the pants, it is one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, despite being a major manufacturing hub.