They are ready to take part in the upcoming national general elections.
The new Mpumalanga political party of traditional leader Chief Mantjolo Mnisi and businessman Themba ‘Masofa’ Sgudla has now been officially launched.
It was launched at the Thulamahhashi stadium in Bushbuckridge on Friday night and featured a lot of people wearing yellow T-shirts with a SANCOTA logo on the side.
The party is launched to contest the May 2019 general elections but also its leaders say they plan to punish the ANC in the province’s municipalities – by luring ANC councillors to resign thereby forcing the system into by-elections.
The launch was attended by cultural groups who danced, sang and entertained the scores of supporters who came for the launch on the night.
‘SANCOTA’ stands for South African Congress of Traditional Authority and its leaders say moving forward there will definitely be by-elections in Mpumalanga municipalities such as Bushbuckridge, Lekwa, eMalahleni, Chief Albert Luthuli, Msukaligwa and Pixley ka Seme.
They will lure ANC councillors to SANCOTA and by-elections will be declared afterwards and “that’s when we will meet them on the ground”.
“In government we are unequal but not at IEC. All of us are equal at IEC, there is no bigger party and there is no small party. We all pay same amount of money,” Sgudla said.
Sgudla’s non-profit organisation, the Practical Radical Economic Transformation (PRET) is SANCOTA’s “alliance partner” and “it will deal with issues of membership while SANCOTA deals with its ideological position”.
“Both PRET and SANCOTA will be a joint force and we are looking for a government that will be based on traditional authority because for many years our people used to be governed by traditional power and never suffered. They used to be taken care of by a collective power headed by the chiefs and really everyone had a dignity,” Sgudla said.
This week Sgudla said that the official launch of SANCOTA will be followed by a string of “programmes aimed at highlighting the plight of the poor”.
“One of them will be a march to Eskom Park in eMalahleni. We are going to be marching in few weeks’ time for Eskom to cancel all debts to municipalities here in Mpumalanga. All these billions that they are being owed should be scrapped,” Sgudla said.
“Eskom must stay away from the municipalities. It must stop doing business with the municipality. Eskom must become a government department and do its own business with the consumers and not through the municipality,” he said.
He added their memorandum will also highlight corruption at Eskom and the “conflict of interest” that the appointed board has.
He warned President Cyril Ramaphosa to be careful when unbundling Eskom now.
“He should not do it now because the ANC might not come back after May. We are just warning him of his rushy and personal decisions,” he said.
(edited by ZK)
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