As the shenanigans surrounding the registration process of COPE's inaugural Congress last weekend played out before us, the words of Napoleon Bonaparte rang in our ears; "I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up."  

This is an apt summation of Lekota's stubborn stance to ensure that COPE's electoral congress collapsed, placing the party into a Constitutional crisis so as to extend his unelected reign beyond the two years given to him by the Bloemfontein Congress on 16 December 2008.

Leading to the Congress Lekota repeatedly instructed the acting General Secretary, Deirdre Carter (AGS), to cancel or postpone the meetings of the National Congress Preparatory Committee (NCPC) and the senior body between National Congresses, the Congress National Committee (CNC). These were earlier attempts to stall the Congress in the CNC announced dates of September and November.  The only sub-committee that met without interference was the Congress Working Committee (CWC), which the Constitution clearly shows to be subordinate to the CNC, and only because in the CWC Lekota had an artificial majority.

A fundamental rule of sub-committees is that they do not have powers beyond what is delegated to them, nor can their powers exceed their senior committee; in this case the CNC.  What repeatedly happened in COPE was Lekota treating recommendations of the CWC as final decisions that didn't require sanction by the CNC.  He abused his position as President and Chair of the CNC and CWC by implementing CWC decisions even when they ran contrary to prior decisions of the CNC.  The terms of reverence and appointment of KPMG was the glaring example of this abuse.

The decisions of the CWC led to the AGS circumventing the Regional and Provincial secretariats, most of whom are legitimately elected officials following their Regional and Provincial elective congresses. The AGS allowed branches to submit delegate registration forms directly to the COPE Head Office.  This undermined the involvement of the Provincial Secretariat whom, in fact, are mandated by the Constitution to ensure that branches are legitimately established, and congress delegates democratically mandated.  It also meant that the highly incompetent office of the AGS was administratively swamped with paperwork that should have been evenly distributed across the Provinces and handled by Provincial Secretaries. 

This led to chaos during Congress registration by allowing for easy manipulation of the delegates; and meant there was simply no capacity to put in place a means to double check that the Congress ‘delegates' were the correct representatives of the Voting Districts as required by the Constitution. Hence we discovered no one had cross-referenced the delegate forms with the branch audit lists.  More disturbingly, the AGS's staff had preloaded "delegates" onto the system before Congress registration had officially begun.

The National Congress Accreditation Committee (NCAC) responsible for the accreditation of delegates for Congress, of whom we were members, conclusively established on Wednesday the 15th that this simple cross-checking of delegates' forms against audited branch databases was mandatory.  More so, the CWC, in one of its decisions had made a huge issue of the branch audits, particular those branches in Provinces that heavily supported Shilowa: the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Gauteng.  The branch audits were overseen and the lists compiled and verified by an independent NGO over the past 4 months.

Therefore the NCAC took a decision to clean out the pre-loaded information and establish the safety check of comparing the delegate registration forms with the branch audit database, excluding any delegates who came from branches that had failed their audit or whose names did not appear as members of the branch. We received an electronic copy of the preloaded delegates from the registration company and an analysis of this data revealed that 252 of 419 voting branch "delegates" (60%) did not passed the branch audit. [This data can be made available if requested to support these claims.] 

Subsequently, the NCAC split the registration tasks amongst the nine provinces to limit the opportunity for contamination or manipulation of the system by one group of people. This is the reason why registration commenced late on the 15th.  We felt this was the only means to ensure a fair and accurate delegation to take part in the elections. This was admittedly caused a lot of delay but it was necessary to ensure a fair outcome.

On Thursday 16 December registration was due to recommence at 5 am but only the few members of the registration team turned up; upon observation we discovered that it was in fact the Lekota aligned people who had not pitch up and could not be reached, nor did the service provider appear. We waited for hours for some progress with delegates milling around not understanding the delay.  

Eventually mid afternoon the outgoing CNC convened, and since their mandate had expired, as per the Bloemfontein resolution of 2008, it was resolved that the control of registering delegates must be taken over by the Provincial Secretaries. This was to avoid the creation of a power vacuum.

The Lekota group was not happy about this, but legally, in the same reason that the CWC cannot lawfully countermand a CNC decision, neither can a body which derives its mandate from a National Congress can prolong its term without National Congress consent. This was why it was necessary for the CNC to dissolve and hand over power to the constitutionally elected leadership of the provinces. 

Registration commenced late afternoon on Thursday with each Province processed one at a time, which was the only viable option given the restrictions of the venue and the limited hardware we had at our disposal.  We continued through the night with the exhausted delegates showing remarkable resolve and commitment to the Congress going ahead. It was a humbling sight to observe. 

Late on Thursday, five of the Provincial Secretaries came across individuals who had printed off the delegate's forms that had been faxed to the AGS and were busy recapturing them in order to feed it back unto the lists and circumvent the NCAC's controls.  The forms were seized by the Provincial Secretaries and remain in their possession at present. Also we discovered more unaudited branches, like the ones prepared by Leonard Ramatlakale of 68 Western Cape parallel branches that was being submitted. There were also other similar incidences involving in particular Limpompo, KZN and Gauteng.

As the morning progressed on Friday, 17 December, there were unexplained attempts to thwart or delay the registration process by senior coordinators.  The registration of the Eastern Cape, the largest Province by far at the Congress, was for instance stopped without explanation by Thozamile Botha (one of Lekotas's principle supporters and the person who had tried to haul Shilowa before a Disciplinary Committee on the eve of the Congress) who was tasked with coordinating the accreditation process.  This meant Gauteng and Free State could not be processed either.  

The reasons for this delay became obvious when Lekota arrived at the venue unannounced with a coterie of body guards. It is our inescapable conclusion had pre-notified his key supporters because he entered the Arena via the earlier formed guard of honour and protective passageway of his supporters. He headed straight to the VIP section upstairs where the CNC members were and grabbed Mbhazima Shilowa by the collar before he was held back by some present there. 

Immediately following this disgraceful display Lekota headed for the stage and effectively disrupted the registration process by demanding a right to address the delegates.  Lekota complained to the Hall that ‘the hooligans' were disrupting the Congress and so he was consulting his team to hold the Congress somewhere else.  Chaos ensued as Shilowa supporters became angry, and the police, who had been incredibly professional and helpful throughout the days and nights, initiated riot control.  Eventually calm was restored to the Hall when the Western Cape Provincial Chairperson, Mbulelo Ndecana, took control to mange the crowd. 

Subsequently Lekota left and held a caucus at the entrance gate of the venue, and a Press Statement was speedily issued stating that the Congress venue was to be abandoned and that delegates were to reconvene at the Pretoria Show Grounds.  We now understand from press reports that he arrived there with a couple of hundred people and tried to disrupt the International Youth Conference, but they were attacked by the youth there, and the police had to secure their safe passage away from that venue. 

Not to be deterred, he tried to convene again at Tshwane University to be crowned President by whoever turned up there.  However, disappointingly for him, those assembled there nominated Sello Moloto, the chairperson of Limpopo, to contest for the Presidency of their splinter group.  Lekota, uncomfortable with Moloto's challenge, disbanded that meeting also.  He then headed for the Cope Head Office where he held a Press Conference unilaterally declaring himself to be ‘still the boss of Cope'. 

Meantime the majority of the Congress delegates had remained behind at the original Congress venue to continues with the business of the Congress. Hennie Kieser, the man who funds Lekota's campaign, instructed the owners of the Congress venue (whom we understand to be his church Pastor) to chuck the delegates out of the building.  The delegates were undeterred and congregated outside on the veranda of building within the yard; whereupon they continued with the Congress and finally nominated a new leadership team from the resolutions of provided by their respective branch and provincial structures.

The rest, as they say, is history with Shilowa being confirmed as President. 

Bonaparte also says; "He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat."  We'd paraphrase slightly and say, "He who fears to be conquered by democratic means is sure of defeat.

Lekota, has for a long time embarrassed the Congress of the People in trying to follow the path of dictators who refuse to yield to the wishes of the democratic voice of their electorate by stepping down when their mandate has ended has finally ended his reign of ‘terror' within COPE.

Calra Motau Cope MPL (Gauteng)

Johan Booth, Cope (Western Cape) Head of Elections

Zale Madonsela, Cope CWC Member

*Motau, Booth and Madonsela were members of Cope NCAC during the last Congress at Heartfelt Arena, Pretoria.

Source: http://copetown.org/

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