Cope launches challenge to ANC
2008-12-14 22:38
Bloemfontein - The Congress of the People (Cope) formally launched its challenge to the ANC on Sunday with a promise to give voters a better alternative to the ruling party in the 2009 elections.
"Let the people judge for themselves which leadership is deserving of their trust. The people will never let us down," Cope chairperson Mosiuoa Terror Lekota told delegates in Bloemfontein.
About 4 000 Cope Members gathered at a campus in the city, also the birthplace of the ANC, to inaugurate the party and finalise its political manifesto.
Singing and dancing was at the order of the day for the yellow-shirted delegates, led by a high-spirited former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa.
Week of victories
"This has been a week of victories," Shilowa said of the Pretoria High Court's rejection, with costs, of the ANC's bid to force Cope to change its name.
Lekota said his movement had brought hope to disaffected South Africans and accused the ANC of resorting to apartheid-style intimidation to disrupt its new rival.
"Intimidation and paralysing fear is now gripping sections of our society - and I mean fear identical to that of the John Vorster and P W Botha era," he said.
Lekota, who left the ANC to form the splinter group after Thabo Mbeki was recalled as president, said the ruling party was carrying out a witch hunt on former colleagues.
"Men and women with whom we worked and shared jokes now have to look the other way...they risk their jobs if they are seen to befriend us."
But Cope national spokesperson Phillip Dexter was phlegmatic about energetic ANC campaigning in Bloemfontein, expected to culminate in a rally with Jacob Zuma on Tuesday.
"It's democracy," he shrugged.
SA 'a mature democracy'
The British High Commissioner to South Africa, Paul Boateng, attended Sunday's launch and hailed Cope as proof of the sound health of South Africa's democracy.
"South Africa is becoming an increasingly mature democracy and this is a sign of that. You will have an electoral process that is a tribute to the country's constitution and its people," he told Sapa.
The Democratic Alliance's parliamentary leader Sandra Botha was also present and said Cope was a "very positive" development that would ring in a new way of conducting party politics in South Africa.
"It is going to be a responsible one and a very inclusive one."
Botha said Cope was making a big effort to open itself to people from across the spectrum. "I believe it's a genuine approach."
Racial tolerance
Lekota called for a culture of racial tolerance and reached out to Afrikaners in particular with a rendition of the folk song Suikerbossie and a passionate defence of the poetic merits of Die Stem.
"We must all enjoy each other. We must bring in elements of each other's cultures," he said.
Western Cape delegate Neels Flatten said the party would change South Africa for the better if it succeeded in "taking race out of politics" and insisted that though born from the ANC, it would differ in policy from the ruling party.
"We have our own policies. If we bring back the Scorpions but do so under specific conditions, if we say all South Africans under 30 must be exempted from affirmative action, that is not the ANC, that is Cope," he said.
Sunday saw members from each region pitch proposals on party strategy to Lekota, ranging from fighting climate change to tackling the elections with gusto.
"We are not going to be an opposition party," said former Independent Democrats member, Simon Grindrod. "The train is now leaving the station and every South African should get onto it. Your job is to go back to your constituency and prepare for voting."
Cope 'must reach the masses'
Shilowa warned that Cope, described by many commentators as a middle class party of Mbeki loyalists, must reach the masses if it wanted to become a serious contender at the polls.
"We will work and tell them about our ideologies. They must know who we are... and we will earn their support."
Cope will launch its election campaign at a rally in Bloemfontein on Tuesday, hours after Zuma addresses a stadium crowd at an event here, marking the anniversary of the birth of Umkhonto weSizwe on December 16, 1961.
Lekota said Cope would bring voters who had lost faith in democracy back to the polls.
"Where many had lost the energy to go and register to vote, they declare that they are now on the comeback trail."
Cope claims to have amassed 428 000 paid-up members since splintering from the ANC at the beginning of November.
"In 44 days, that's something," said Flatten.
- SAPA