ANC refuses to 'legitimise' dissident faction

by Jordan Yerman | October 26, 2008 at 12:34 pm

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Former South African defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota is leading breakaway faction of the African National Congress towards creating a new party and an upcoming convention. The group is leveraging social-media technology to recruit younger members, who have grown up with the ANC as status quo, rather than as the party of revolutionaries.

This, ultimately, is the ANC's quandary.

"The new party is expected to take the social democrat route and to exploit technology to the full in its campaign and recruitment process," Mbhazima, who resigned from the ANC earlier this month, told the Sunday Independent.

"Mobile phone text messages, websites including Facebook and other social forums would be used for discussions and recruiting," he added.

All parties would be invited to the faction's convention next month to launch the new party, Mbhazima said, which "would target young, upwardly mobile professionals but at the same time focus on the poor and the working class".

Though the mainstream ANC itself was invited to attend the pre-convention meetings, it predictably declined.

But ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe told the newspaper his party was not willing to accept the invitation.

"We can't be invited by some faction. We can't legitimise a faction," he was quoted as saying.

If the ANC's own legitimacy was unassailable, though, there would be no issue of factions.

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