The leader continues to hold talks with counterparts from other tribal bases ahead of the 8 May 2019 elections.
Leader for the newly formed Mpumalanga political party SANCOTA, Chief Mantjolo Mnisi, has met with other chiefs and explained why he and businessman Themba Sgudla started and registered it.
Mantjolo was launching SANCOTA in KwaNdebele Tuesday this week and spoke at the Tribal Council of iNkosi Ndzundza Mabhoko in Kameelrivier.
He said one day late last year he was sitting at his home in the Enkonjeni royal kraal near Badplaas when Sgudla came and made the suggestions for a party like SANCOTA to be formed.
Mantjolo said: “Sgudla heard the cries of the people of Mpumalanga and South Africa as a whole and said during this difficult time I wanna be there, please send me”.
He said Sgudla saw the escalating poverty amongst the black communities as well as the “cultural decay, loss of respect” and “he called a meeting and in it said that I can see that the traditional authority in my own country is fading away, too much poverty and the entire house is on fire, and reminded us that ‘with all of this happening in the country there is one time when the chiefs will be asked to account’,” he said.
“We came out with an organisation called ‘South African National Congress of Traditional Authority’ or ‘SANCOTA’ and I am its President,” Mantjolo said at Chief Ndzundza’s royal kraal.
Mantjolo said SANCOTA is an “old organisation because the traditional chiefs have been there for many, many years”.
He said SANCOTA was “a giant” started by Sgudla and “SANCOTA is not here to oppose other political parties but to listen to the nation”.
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“SANCOTA listens to what the nation says and do. The problem we are having today is that the rulers today tell the nation what to do and is no longer a nation having the involvement of chiefs”.
He said most of the problems in South Africa could have been solved easily had the rulers involved traditional authorities, “because the chiefs don’t look at your face and say ‘no, because your surname is this, I won’t give you services. They don’t. They treat all their subjects with respect, dignity and equality,” Mantjolo explained at the council on Tuesday this week.
The party was registered early this year to contest the upcoming general elections. It is an alliance partner to Sgudla’s non-profit organisation the Practical Radical Economic Transformation (PRET) group.
Mantjolo was with Sgudla at the Kameelrivier meeting. IKosi Ndzundza didn’t attend the meeting at his royal kraal as he was away but sent IKosi Fene Mahlangu to form part of it.
Several Izindunas from the kraal and neighbouring ones attended the meeting and Sgudla also addressed it.
He said he would use his money towards the fight for the return of traditional authority.
(edited by MLM)
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