Ramphele’s Agang worries ANC

The ANC is concerned that the launch of Mamphele Ramphele’s political party is a ploy to channel funds from the US to destabilise South Africa.

Speaking at a media briefing at the Ranch Hotel outside Polokwane, following the party’s National Working Committee meeting today, Mantashe expressed “serious misgivings” about Agang, which Ramphele launched at Constitutional Hill earlier today.

Said Mantashe: “We are hoping against hope that it is not an American initiative aimed at destabilising our country. Our worry is that when this initiative was announced, the foundation was in the US. We are very much alive to concerns by Western powers that liberation movements in Africa are too powerful.”

As such, Mantashe suggested, they would fund organisations which would help limit those powers.

Cope, he said, had also received funding from the US when it was formed.

Nothing new came out of the statement which Ramphele delivered today, said Mantashe, adding that Agang would “howl at the ANC from the periphery”.

“Nothing new came out of that statement. All the issues they are raising were raised during the state of the nation address. For now it is an undefined party political platform. It is amorphous and not clear. It will join a long list of of more than 156 political parties operating in South Africa.”

Agang’s launch was driven by grievances, he said, adding that the ANC will monitor it and engage with it as it does with other political parties. He said the ANC didn’t have issues with Ramphele’s call for the changing of South Africa’s electoral system so that proportional representation is done away with. “The ANC is okay with it but she must know that it’s the small parties which will suffer.”

Following the party’s two-day meeting with the Limpopo ANC’s Provincial Executive Committee (PEC), Mantashe said the NWC would now consolidate all the information at its disposal and make recommendations to the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).

On March 15, the NEC will make an announcement on how the party will deal with the political problems in Limpopo.

It is widely believed that the ANC will either disband the PEC or set up an interim committee to operate alongside it.

During the party’s first visit to the province last month branches and regions complained bitterly about the PEC, saying it was marginalising them.

Mantashe said the NWC would go as far as to investigate if appointments to the provincial cabinet and other senior post in the provincial government and municipalities were made on merit or based on factional battles.

The PEC’s relationship with other provincial structures such as regions and branches will take centre stage, he said.