Such schooling will help the warring comrades “expand their political understanding” when running society.
The ANC’s national disciplinary committee (NDC) has recommended to party national secretary Ace Magashule that leaders in Mpumalanga be taken to political school after it found the tensions were so high among leaders in the province that it was impacting on the party’s future.
The committee found eHlanzeni leader Ngrai Ngwenya not guilty of assaulting acting secretary Lindiwe Ntshalintshali as well as disrupting an ANC meeting. But it found regional treasurer Phindile Nkuna guilty of her assault and ordered that she apologises to the ANC as well as to Ntshalintshali within 7 days.
The committee said looking at the way comrades were interacting with one another while the disciplinary hearing was sitting last week 26 and 27 September 2019 in Gauteng shows the “lack of cohesion” among the leaders in the province which “does not augur well for future relations amongst the provincial and regional leaders”.
The disciplinary committee freed Ngwenya of all charges and found that he didn’t in fact assault Ntshalintshali.
Ngwenya told DC chair Mildred Oliphant that there was no way he could have assaulted Ntshalintshali because he was not able to reach her during the scuffle at the Nutting House Lodge in Mbombela on the Wednesday evening of 17 July 2019 where the ANC was having a planned special regional general council (RGC) communicating the upper structure’s decision to disband the two regions of Bohlabela and eHlanzeni.
Ngwenya said there was a row of chairs in front of him on that day of the scuffle and he never picked up a single chair to hit Ntshalintshali.
Ngwenya and Nkuna had been charged by the ANC for the assault of Ntshalintshali and disrupting an ANC gathering or behaving in a manner that’s likely to cause disunity.
Ngwenya was also found not guilty of disrupting an ANC gathering because when he and Nkuna entered the Nutting House hall to apparently begin the tussle the RGC had already concluded.
The disciplinary committee also felt it would “constitute selective prosecution” if both Ngwenya and Nkuna are charged for disrupting an ANC gathering when in fact there were many other comrades who were protesting at the venue.
In her findings, Oliphant wished to bring to the attention of Magashule’s office “the lack of cohesion amongst the leaders and serious underlying tensions in the province which detract from the unity project of the organisation”.
“The NDC has noted that inter-personal relations are so low that comrades did not even speak to each other at the disciplinary hearing,” she said, adding that the “degree of bullying” that existed amongst the comrades won’t make it simple for them to work together in the future.
Oliphant also asked that those NEC members deployed to Mpumalanga be seen as playing a major part “in building institutional capacity in the province”.
When playing a “more pro-active role”, Oliphant recommended, the NEC deployees will assist Mpumalanga “with the current challenges in governance which was evident from the decision-making ability of the leaders and the quality of documents which were before the NDC”.
(edited by MLM)
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