Mpumalanga ANC responds to MK Council’s threat over list

They say a planned list conference went the way it was supposed to and those who are suggesting otherwise are not honest.

The Mpumalanga ANC has slammed suggestions that it presided over an “abnormal” list conference which saw certain leaders being allegedly removed from the list, saying the MK Council is a factional grouping of the MKMVA and they will always say such.

In their operation they will always try and portray the leadership as bad because they believe it’s not leadership when they are not there, it said.

The party says all processes were followed and there would not be ways where the votes could have be manipulated in favour of certain people.

Provincial acting secretary Lindiwe Ntshalintshali responds following threats made by the MK Council a week ago – where they called on national leader Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene and suspend the Mpumalanga list conference because it was rigged or “perverted”.

READ ALSO: MK Council threatens violence over list irregularities

The ANCYL in the province has also questioned the outcomes of the list conference, saying such was not the view of the branches.

Ntshalintshali said those who say so “clearly do not understand internal processes” and there was no way the processes could have been rigged in favour of certain leaders aligned to a dominant faction.

“It’s about branches. If branches don’t put your name or the people you want [then] you go all over the place telling people that processes were not followed. You are being unfair,” Ntshalintshali said when she spoke to the 013NEWS reporter over the phone.

She said the conference was run by an election team appointed by Luthuli House.

Ntshalintshali said there were three lists for the list conference – province to province, province to national and national to national and branches were given the opportunity to choose 20 leaders per list.

She said during the nomination process once a leader’s name got nominated by over 10 branches that person would then qualify to be on the ballot paper ahead of a conference.

“If you received less than 10 branches, nobody removed you. It’s the process that removed you. You didn’t qualify,” she said over the phone.

She said that the MK Council is a group of people that broke away from the MKMVA and in the ANC “we don’t have a structure called MK Council. This is a faction”.

She said the person being quoted in media as the council’s provincial executive committee member, Jacques Modipane, cannot even win a branch.

Ntshalintshali said Modipane’s ward in Bushbuckridge is run by the Bushbuckridge Residents Association and if he must speak about provincial issues why is he not sorting out his branch issue.

“He was once a PEC member and an MEC. Imagine his own ward is run by the opposition but he expects to be elected into the list. Even if we can give him an opportunity to run as a ward councillor he won’t win. So you see a person like that,” Ntshalintshali said.

The list conference was held at the Mbombela stadium on 9 December 2018 to elect leaders who should go to the legislature and Parliament.

The MK Council has said that the processes were not followed and were calling on Ramaphosa to suspend the list outcomes, citing that it was marred by manipulation.

The council said that if Ramaphosa didn’t adhere to their call for the suspension of the list conference they would resort to violence and “dead bodies will be picked from the street”.

“Our warning to the president is that, please see this team. We don’t want to collect bodies on the streets, people not able to go to work and schools being disturbed,” Modipane, said.

But Ntshalintshali said as ANC they are not scared of the MK Council.

She said as long as they know that they are in the right, nobody can threaten the movement.

“We are saying that there would not be ways where the processes could have been manipulated. People are just being unfair and calling for unnecessary attention,” she said.

(edited by ZK)

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