'Welcome to God's party'

2009-11-03 18:05

Johannesburg - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu on Tuesday welcomed a decision by cleric Allan Boesak to quit opposition party Cope and join "God's party".

"I have never stopped telling him God called him to be a pastor, a preacher, a comforter of the afflicted and afflicter of the comfortable," Tutu said in a statement.

"I have nagged him since the 1990s to heed the call of God not as a politician but as a pastor with outstanding intellectual and oratorical gifts, one who is blessed with a sharp creative intellect.

"I cannot say how thrilled I am that Allan has followed this path and agreed to serve the people through God, rather than through political parties," said Tutu.

Cope 'in disarray'

Boesak quit the Congress of the People on Tuesday, saying its structures were in disarray.

"From the very beginning the party structures, such as they were, were characterised by faction fighting, strife, pitched battles for political supremacy and duplicity...

"At this point the party structures continue to be in disarray."

Boesak "expressly" said he did not want a leadership position in Cope when he joined it in December 2008.

"It was only after the severest pressures that I conceded to assist the party in the elections."

Deep resentment was caused within the party "by the irregularities with the list process and the interim leadership situation persisted and made normal work almost impossible", Boesak said in a statement.

This is an apparent reference to reports of in-fighting between Mvume Dandala - elected as Cope's presidential candidate - and party leader Terror Lekota.

Boesak said many "good, hard workers" in the party had been suspended because they dared to criticise the leadership.

Criticism brushed aside

Cope spokesperson Phillip Dexter brushed aside Boesak's criticism, saying it was never going to be easy to launch a new political party.

"We've received his resignation with regret. He joined the party when we launched... so obviously people had high hopes for his involvement.

"The kind of challenges he pointed out... are ordinary challenges when you are dealing with a new organisation.

"We wish him the best in his future endeavours," Dexter told Sapa.

Cope also issued a statement on Tuesday, saying it was celebrating the first anniversary of its national convention held in Sandton, Johannesburg last year in November.

"Those who predicted Cope's demise have been proved wrong. The CWC [central working committee] was satisfied that the party is growing from strength to strength," it said.

Third party resignation

Boesak's resignation is not the first to hit the party that saw the light late last year under the leadership of ex-ANC veterans Lekota, Mluleki George and Mbhazima Shilowa.

Two senior Cope leaders, Simon Grindrod and Lynda Odendaal, resigned in recent months, expressing disappointment with the way the party was being managed.

Cope is the third-biggest party in Parliament and has been increasingly working with the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance.

Tutu said Boesak had now joined "God's party".

"Some may say that Allan, as a member of the human race, is not perfect.

"But few would argue that he is not perfectly equipped to inspire a new generation of active and involved citizens - as he did once before. Welcome back to God's party," said Tutu.

Boesak, who was convicted of fraud in 1999 but later pardoned, recently released his autobiography, Running with Horses: Reflections of an Accidental Politician, in which he maintains his innocence.

- SAPA