Gwede Mantashe and ANC leadership in North West blamed for loss of a ward to MK party

ANC leaders in the Bojanala region have accused the party’s national chairperson,  Gwede Mantashe, and the North West provincial executive committee (PEC) of interfering in the process of choosing a councillor candidate, which resulted in the ward seat being lost to the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.

They say Mantashe and the provincial committee ignored warnings from the regional  leaders about imposing a candidate that did not have the support of voters.

By-election results on Wednesday showed that the MK party won its first ward outside of KwaZulu-Natal, securing 43% vote in Photsaneng, Rustenburg. The ward was previously held by the ANC, but fell vacant after the councillor died. The ANC got 33% of the vote this time around, down sharply from 44% in the 2021 local government elections.

The loss is embarrassing for the ANC and there are fears it might be replicated in other areas, said a source in the Bojanala region, who did not want to be named.

Some in the party’s provincial structure have blamed Rustenburg’s executive mayor, Sheila Mabale-Huma, for the loss of the ward, but others have defended her, saying the blame lies squarely at the feet of Mantashe and the PEC.

The ANC’s process of selecting a candidate for by-elections or provincial elections begins with a branch general meeting where party members nominate four candidates, followed by a community meeting where they respond to questions from residents, one source said. 

The next step is a community vote where one candidate is selected for submission to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

The source said the branch leadership flagged concerns that the candidates for the voting district did not live in Kareng and were Xhosa speakers.

“What happened in ward 45, there are three voting districts, Photsaneng, Thekwane and Kareng. Kareng has Xhosas and when we looked at it in the community meeting, they imported people from elsewhere,” they said.

“They disputed their participation in the process andt wrote to the regional executive committee [which] made a submission to the PEC [which] dismissed the dispute without even entertaining it. The Xhosa guys even called comrade Gwede Mantashe and comrade Madoda Sambatha, saying ‘the Tswanas are driving tribalism and they don’t want us’.

“The interference from Gwede, Madoda Sambatha and the PEC has cost the ANC that ward because when the dispute was raised, they did not even want to entertain the merits of the dispute and said they are going with the candidate that is preferred. We said the candidate is not properly processed because they were voted by people from other wards.”

North West ANC secretary Louis Diremelo denied the allegations saying Mantashe was not involved in the selection of candidates. “The voters from areas outside ward 45 or people whose address … the IEC could not confirm were disqualified. The issue of voting based on tribal lines was discouraged.” 

He said the ANC election structures wanted an urgent postmortem on the results from four wards the party contested. 

One source said the failure to prioritise service delivery had hurt the party in the province.

During a visit to the Ngaka Modiri Molema region in North West in May last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa warned ANC branches that the party would lose the 2024 elections if they continued with factionalism and infighting.

“If we go to 2024 with this disunity, which I see here, I can promise you we are not going to be successful. If you want to lose the election, then you must proceed with this disunity I am seeing here,” he said.

“For as long as you are divided, we will not be able to solve our problems. You are members of the same family, but you are pulling in different directions.”