The Full Letter of the General Secretary

20 May 2010

Dear Members of COPE,

The last few weeks have been challenging for COPE. Members of COPE not too close to all the goings on have had reason to ask after the health of our organization and our readiness to go to our highest decision making body of our organizations. The CNC has made a deliberate decision at the beginning of this year to steer the organization towards this very important milestone of our organizations. To prepare for this a Congress Preparatory Committee largely made of our provincial secretaries was constituted to oversee this process. Our mandate is about to come to an end as we are on the eve of that historic congress. Ahead of this conference a deadline for the launching of branch was set at 31 March. I want to thank all of you who worked hard to make sure that the branches as a basic unit of our organization are in place ready to serve your communities.

It is with pleasure that I report to you that the national audit for all our branches are now complete. Your branch leadership should by now have received the outcomes of the audit. This audit has produced a staggering 2316 branches of the Congress of the People. Only a few branches did not meet the simple requirements of the audit team. That 25 people needed to be present, sign the attendance register and pay the required membership fee.    

The table below summarised the outcomes of the audit as well as the constitution of our conference:

VOTING DELEGATES EXPECTED IN THE CONGRESS

Total Number of Branch Delegates: 2 052

The remaining 10% of the other category of delegates is the COPEWM, COPEYM and PILG's. The 10% of 2 052 is 205. The constitution does not provide any formulae for the allocation of the remaining 10%. It is hereby proposed that the COPEWM and COPEYM should be allocated 40% of this 205, namely, 80 and the PILG's/CPC share the remainder equally

COPEWM - 40 delegates

COPEYM - 40 delegates

PILG's - 127 delegates = 125 divide by 9 equals to 13.6 = 14 x 9 = 126

The CNC as National Congress host structure will attend as voting delegates. The following is an outline of the CNC delegation:

·    36 Directly elected members

·    18 Provincial Chairpersons and Secretaries

·    4 National Chairpersons and Secretaries of COPEWM and COPEYM

·    Total 58

Categories of voting delegates

Congress Preparations

The Congress Technical Committee has given consistent reports about Preparations. Members will be pleased to know that all necessary arrangements to receive delegates are in place.

Date: 27 - 30 May 2010.

Venue: St Georges Conference Centre, Centurion.
Theme: Keeping the Hope for Change Alive.
Programme Highlights: The receipt of the Political, Organizational and Financial Report. The discussion of draft COPE Policies.   

Calls for Postponement of Congress

In an unfortunate development there are certain leaders of COPE who have been making calls outside the formal structures of COPE for the Congress to be postpones. What is strange and unacceptable is that these calls were never made even in a meeting as recently convened as last weekend.  

Ill advised as these calls may be It is crucial that the organization deals squarely with issues that are being raised by these comrades systematically. The forum to deal with these organizational matters are the structures of the organization that all these comrades have full access to. The only conclusion we can arrive at is that this is a deliberate ploy to disrupt preparations for the conference and defocus delegates who are preparing themselves for this historic inaugural elective conference.

1. On a demand for an investigation against the deputy President. There is no investigation against comrade Shilowa. The COPE books are being audited both at head office and in parliament. Both process are going on very smoothly. In fact the CNC has already approved preliminarily the Treasurer's report that will serve next week in front of Congress. We are on track to receive a full report from our parliamentary team at Congress next week.  

2. On the issue of audit of branches. On Monday we released a report on the audit of our membership and branches. This report has enabled us to determine the delegation to conference. According to this report approved unanimously by the CNC ,2316 branches have passed the audit and can send delegates to congress. There is no basis for any new audit of our membership and COPE reject outright any calls for such an audit from whatever quarters are being made

3. The policy discussions at COPE have been going on since Bloemfontein. We believe that the national congress must give direction regarding work in this regard despite the quality of the work that may have been produced thus far. The matter of policy deliberations at branches is not a reason to stall conference. The CNC has appreciated the reasons why the policy documents under the stewardship of Comrade Smust Ngonyama have not been released early enough and in fact led to the failure of the Policy Indaba originally scheduled for April 2010.

4. The CNC has not received any formal complaints about the Provincial conferences of Gauteng or the Western Cape. These matters are irrelevant to the sitting of the national congress even if they were raised. The Congress is a summit of COPE branched that will sit unencumbered by any provincial conference outcomes.

A note to delegates

All delegates are expected to report to the accreditation centre in Pretoria on the 27^th May 2010 between the hours of 9 oclock in the morning up to 23:00. Delegates must produce positive identification in the form of an ID a passport or a drivers licence in order to receive an accreditation card that will give them access to their document pack and meal vouchers for the duration of the conference. It is this accreditation and your ID that you will need to access the conference venue in St Georges where all the congress will commence at 08:00 on the 28^th May 2010. 

Delegates must also note that documents for commission discussions are now available on the COPEE website for preparations. Please ensure that you read these in preparations for the deliberations of this important conference.

For those that will not be able to follow conference proceedings these will be summarised into an informative post conference publication. Those with access to the internet a pod cast of the open sessions of the conference will be available from mid morning of the first day of the conference.

I look forward to welcoming your delegations to this historical national congress.

In the mean time please do keep the hope for change alive!

Sincerely,  

Charlotte Lobe

General Secretary

Issued by the Congress of the People, May 20 2010

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter