In responding to you, Mbhazima, it is unfortunate that one has to begin by pointing out that it was distasteful, opportunistic and downright callous to use of the death of your Personal Assistant, Jen de Wet to score political points (see here). It is a measure of the extent to which you are prepared to go to discredit other people for the attainment of your objective; personal political power and office.
One did not want to get into this, but you and your supporters in this letter and in a number of forums, have implied that Jen's death relates to the KPMG audit report. What is shocking is that you as a leader should be taking responsibility for the stress put onto Jen and other staff members, all of who were allegedly instructed to allow the use of their personal bank accounts for laundering parliamentary funds so that it could be used for "petty cash".
It is this that led their names to be reported in the KPMG forensic audit report. That anybody else should be blamed for this when you were the accounting officer for these funds and the suggestion made that this led to Jen's death, is to undermine everything that COPE stands for and that people such as Jen believed in.
However, onto the politics of COPE. You state that COPE's vision should never falter, that we should remind ourselves why COPE was formed, that COPE members must be allowed to elect their own leaders, that some unnamed people are planning to interdict the Congress, that there are "parallel" structures being set up in the party and that the Eastern Cape CPC is the only legitimate structure in COPE. Let's examine these statements that you present as facts.
Firstly, what is COPE's vision? It is to defend the constitution and the laws of the country, fight against political and financial corruption, ensure good governance and implement policies that improve the lives of our people and deal with the challenges that communities face. Its vision is further to contribute to a peaceful global order, starting in our continent.
Which aspects have you upheld or undermined? I am not aware of any activities of yours on the continent or globally, but inside COPE you have openly promoted a faction, dubbed by you as the Shilowa Express, that has sought to put you in office as a president of the party, principally by subverting the constitution of the party. How can you then be expected to defend the constitution of the country?
You have done nothing to stop these supporters of yours from disrupting CNC meetings, even when they threatened with force and violence you stood by silently as they first stole and then tore up ballot papers.
Your supporters have openly stopped people from joining the party and launching branches. The "parallel" structures you refer to are these genuine members of COPE who have continued to build the party in the face of such provocation. This faction of yours is the only actual parallel structure and your confession that you only recognize the CPC of the Eastern Cape is clear evidence of this. That means that you do not, and in my view have never, accepted the CNC appointed in Bloemfontein to run the party.
As for good governance, your track record as Chief Whip and accounting officer in parliament speaks for itself. Not only have there been no systems, procedures or policies in place, but when you could not get people to carry out your ill intentions, you simply changed the signatories to the accounts! Having been found by auditors to have done all kinds of things that are wrong in terms of the legislation governing public funds, your response has been Zuma-esque; you are now saying that these charges are a conspiracy by some "power mongers" in the party.
As for using the courts, you have been litigious by any measure. After condemning the President and I for going to court on behalf of excluded members when your supporters tried to steal the Congress at St Georges, you have been to court no less than 6 times and, incidentally, have lost every time! It is your supporters who are in fact threatening court action over the December Congress.
This continual passing the buck that you seem to have perfected as a leadership style is what is most worrying about you. As Deputy President of the party and as Chief Whip it is expected of you to take responsibility for things when they go wrong on your watch. Instead, you have all manner of excuses for the state of affairs of the party, but essentially they all boil down to this - if you were leader of the party, things would be different and better by far.
Your quoting Bismarck, an arch-Fascist, gives the game away. You do not believe in democracy or building a party with a collective leadership. You believe that you are preordained by history to lead. Such egoism and narcissism in anyone is difficult to stomach, but in a leader it is scary.
Alleging that there are nameless and faceless corrupt people in COPE behind what has been the response to your poor leadership and accusing these same people of the politics of lies is no answer to the problems of the party. It breeds further factionalism and is reminiscent of the style of leadership of the same "socialist" Eastern Europe you rightly point out was an aberration of history. There, labeling and witch-hunting were the order of the day. You have even called the President of the party a witch!
You should heed your own advice - know when to quit. You are dividing the party, you are the source of factionalism, you are what has distracted us from our mission, which is developing policies, implementing campaigns, looking after our constituents interests. Your lust for power, even to the extent of wanting to hold a Congress that was completely unconstitutional, is what has distracted us.
It is a shame that a leader of your potential and former stature has reduced himself to a caricature of a tin-pot dictator, hell-bent on leading the party or destroying it if you cannot. It is incumbent on those of us who have worked closely with you and observed your conduct to tell the membership the truth.
We have all made mistakes and must take responsibility for these. But only you and your faction have had an agenda to ensure that you are elected president of the party at any and all costs. That is what most resembles the ANC we left. It was Zuma's lust for power that subverted the values of the ANC. I can see little if any difference between you and the President of the ANC.
I can only hope that you do not succeed in your ambition, for if you were to, COPE would cease to be an alternative to the ruling party and would become nothing more than a "mini-me" version of it.
Phillip Dexter is COPE's Head of Communications. He writes in his personal capacity.
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