ANC delegates start voting
2007-12-18 06:57
Polokwane - Voting finally began on Tuesday morning
for the top six positions in the leadership of the ANC.
Delegates to the 52nd national conference of the movement started voting for the six posts, with slight delays to the actual balloting, which was due to begin at 06:00.
The list of nominations was completed at a late evening plenary meeting on Monday in the marquee set up for the conference at the University of Limpopo. And it is finally definite - there will be only two candidates for the presidency of the party, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Any possibility that a third compromise candidate might emerge was finally dashed.
At the nominating session, businessman Tokyo Sexwale withdrew his name
from nomination as national chairperson. To loud applause and cheers he told the conference that he was withdrawing to show his commitment to women's empowerment.
"In recognition of the fact that we are committed to the empowerment
of women, I have decided to step back and do so in preference to Baleka," he said.
Baleka Mbete, the speaker of the national assembly, was then nominated for the post from the floor. She has also withdrawn from the contest for the deputy general secretary's job, currently held by Sankie Mthembe Mahanyele.
Mbete now faces Mbeki loyalist Joel Netshitenzhe, head of the policy unit in the presidency, for the chair, and in her place struggle veteran, and apartheid victim - the first woman jailed for her part in the struggle - Thandi Modise was nominated from the floor for the deputy secretary post.
There was no need to count the forest of hands that went up to support her
nomination. To be nominated from the floor requires endorsement by a quarter of the voting delegates - there are 3 900 delegates whose credentials have been approved. So she needed to have 975 in her favour. It was plain that that total was well exceeded.
Delegates disqualified
She faces Thoko Didiza, the public works minister, and another Mbeki loyalist, who was already nominated for the job.
Mosiuoa Lekota presently the chairperson - who was given a hard time by
vociferous adherents of Jacob Zuma on the first day of the conference - and Gwede Mantashe a Communist Party leader, were the only two nominations for the position of secretary general.
There were no extra names put forward for the treasurer's position. Matthew Phosa, former premier of Mpumalanga, was applauded when his name was put forward, but Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka, Mbeki's deputy president, was greeted with stony silence as she accepted her nomination.
Earlier in the day the credentials committee, who decided which delegates would be allowed to vote, disqualified a number on the ground that the branch meetings which nominated them were not quorate.
As a result Gauteng had its delegate allocation cut from 354 to 258 (plus 22 members of the provincial executive). Gauteng voted overwhelmingly in favour of Zuma at the nomination stage late last month.
The Eastern Cape, an Mbeki stronghold, lost 29 delegates out of a massive 928, But the Zuma power base of KwaZulu Natal lost only two delegates from it allocation. It's total is now 628.
The other contentious issue - how the votes are to be counted - was only partly settled on Monday. The votes for the six officials will be counted manually. But the recommendation of the electoral commission that the votes for the national executive should be counted electronically has still not been endorsed by the conference.
The job of counting votes manually got even more demanding on Monday as the conference approved a constitutional amendment raising the number of additional members of the national executive from 60 to 80. The six elected officials are also executive members, so the total will be 86.
A second amendment requires that at least half of the people in the ANC's leadership structures should be women. The assumption is that the 50% rule will apply to the executive as a whole but not to the six elected officials.