Khutsong,+Moutse,+Matatiele-Maluti,+Mail+and+Guardian

//Khutsong (& see below for Moutse and Matatiele-Maluti)//
=Reaping the whirlwind=

//Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, 17 February 2006//
African National Congress national chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota this week talked and acted tough in Khutsong township, where no ANC electoral activity has taken place because of a planned election boycott by residents.

In a climate of anger, fear and intimidation, Lekota threatened to crack down on elements in the township who were disrupting free electoral activity.

In the same week, about 2 000 women marched in protest against Khutsong’s incorporation into the North West, while an ANC councillor candidate withdrew from the list in response to intolerable pressure. Wearing “Khutsong 100% Gauteng” T-shirts, the women carried placards warning “Lekota jy vat ’n kans [Lekota you’re taking a chance]”.

ANC candidate Petrus Juba Tlhobela told the //Mail & Guardian// that he had resigned from the list after friends and family persuaded him that the heat he was experiencing was not worth a council position.

Tlhobela was number seven on the ANC’s Merafong proportional list. As with other councillors, he had been urged to resign in solidarity with most of the community who are boycotting the elections.

“I took this decision after my doctor booked me off from work due to stress,” he said.

A week ago, an ANC councillor, Oupa Ramokgwatedi, was arrested for shooting a resident after ANC members were pelted with stones when they tried to hold a meeting.He is currently facing an attempted murder charge.

Ramokgwatedi is one of 14 councillors who fled the township in December after their homes were torched. They are staying in a Carletonville mine compound and cannot campaign in the township despite the fact that some of them are listed as ward candidates.

No party political posters are visible, as they were torn down as soon as they were put up. Schools and churches, which serve as voting stations, have received letters warning them not to open on election day as the drive for a successful election boycott intensifies.

Merafong Council estimates that R20-million of damage has been caused through the burning of municipal offices, libraries, houses and councillors’ properties.

At a mass rally last week, residents vowed they would never allow the ANC to campaign in the area. Members of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) said there would be no schooling this year if they received any documentation carrying the North West education department’s letterhead.

An anonymous pamphlet was recently distributed in the township accusing the South African Communist Party, which at one stage spearheaded the protest campaign, of being criminals and opportunists and of being led by tsotsis (gangsters).

The pamphlet accused the local SACP leaders of being apartheid-era policemen, womanisers, warlords and foreigners in the township. “Are these true leaders? Say no to the SACP of violence and initimidation!” it demands.

This is despite the fact that the local SACP appeared to backtrack on the campaign after its national leadership announced the party would back the ANC in the elections. Community resistance is now led by the Anti-North West Committee.

The fraught climate prompted the ANC to deploy its top leadership, including Lekota, North West Premier Edna Molewa and several provincial ministers, to the area. Lekota spent most of this week trying to open the township to electioneering and meeting important stakeholders such as churches and business.

ANC MP Khotso Khumalo, who has also been deployed in the area, said the ANC had drafted a programme for normalisation. “We want the situation to calm down so that free campaigning can start, we can eliminate no-go areas and eventually ensure an ANC victory in all wards.

“We want to be able to speak authoritatively so that people will vote on March 1,” Khumalo said.

The ANC is planning sectoral meetings, culminating in a mass rally in the township.

Oupa Diale, a veteran member of the ANC, who supports the protest action, said: “If the leadership had come here and addressed residents when the incorporation decision was taken, the ANC would not be the target of the community’s anger.”

Initially, the local SACP leadership was planning to put up candidates against the ANC, but the party’s national leadership issued a strong statement saying the party had adopted a resolution at its last congress to support the ANC in the local government elections.

Local leaders told the //M&G// that the ANC had put pressure on them to help them calm the upsurge, but they had refused.

//Moutse//
='We don't hate the ANC'=

Monako Dibetle
Fury over the African National Congress’s decision to relocate the Moutse district from Mpumalanga to Limpopo has driven all 11 South African Communist Party members to stand as independent ward candidates in the local government elections.

The decision conflicts with the SACP’s national decision to support the ANC in the elections.

Residents expressed their disgust at the incorporation decision and told the Mail & Guardian they would resist the move to the bitter end. ANC posters have been torn down and Moutse is understood to have become a no-go area for the party’s campaigners.

Moutse SACP district chairperson Mothiba Rampisa said he and 10 other SACP members were standing as independent candidates and mobilising the community to resist Moutse’s incorporation into Limpopo province.

Rampisa said threats by the SACP’s Limpopo secretary, Justice Piitso, to terminate the membership of all who opted to stand as independents did not worry him.

“If they want to expel us, let them do it. The alliance should not survive at our expense. If the alliance breaks, it breaks and we say halala [congratulations]! We are going to stand as the community of Moutse, not the SACP, so that our outcry about incorporation is heard,” Rampisa says.

He complained that the decision to incorporate Moutse into Limpopo was taken without the community’s knowledge. SACP national spokesperson Francis Maleka said the party was not aware of any backlash and would decide on the issue at its central committee meeting this weekend. “Our knowledge is that our members are hard at work for the ANC’s victory in the elections,” Maleka said.

On Tuesday the residents of Moutse township (also known as Tambo township) met at the local sports ground to discuss the incorporation and the case of seven residents arrested during a residents’ gathering last Saturday.

The seven allegedly beat up the acting traditional chief of the area, Chakie Mathebe, for supporting the ANC.

Mathebe, who suffered a broken arm and a cut to the head, said the incorporation move had nothing to do with him. “I am not a culprit in this cross-border municipality issue because it is not my area of operation. But it is my democratic right to belong to the political party of my choice.

“What worries me is that I have became a victim of a political issue, as if I am spearheading the incorporation. I’m very worried,” he said.

A pensioner, JM Msiza, said the community was expecting the government to inform them about the decision.

“We voted for the ANC and now it doesn’t even bother to inform us when it makes important decisions that directly affect our lives. I thought this was a democracy,” he complained.

The youth of Moutse complained of extreme poverty and unemployment and said they believed incorporation would worsen their plight.

“Life in Mpumalanga is not easy, but it’s better than in Limpopo. We are willing to die for Moutse to remain a part of Mpumalanga. If the ANC wants to run people’s lives, it should have told us when we first voted for it in 1994,” said community youth leader Siphiwe Mogotlane.

“We don’t hate the ANC, but we want to teach them a lesson,” said Moutse taxi driver Tefo Mathibedi.

The ANC’s Limpopo secretary, Cassel Mathale, said independent candidates would have no effect on the ANC’s success in the elections.

“The only way people of Moutse can address their concerns is through the ANC,” Mathale said.


 * From: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=264589&area=/insight/insight__national/**

//Matatiele-Maluti//
=Cross-border dispute splits community=

Vicki Robinson
The African National Congress in Kokstad’s Matatiele municipality has splintered over the government’s handling of the cross-border dispute in the area.

A new political party, called the African Independent Congress, led by former ANC mayor Cedric Canham, will field candidates in 23 of the municipality’s 24 wards.

And this week the once fiercely pro-ANC community mounted a legal challenge to the government, asking the Constitutional Court to stop the transfer of Matatiele from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape before the March 1 local election. About 200 community members caught overnight taxis to Johannesburg on Tuesday to attend.

Central to their application is the claim that Parliament has usurped the power of the Municipal Demarcation Board, a constitutionally independent organ of the state, in changing provincial boundaries to eliminate cross-border councils.

The court will rule next week whether it can be approached directly over a municipal demarcation dispute or whether a lower court should first handle the case.

The judgement could strike down the new demarcation of 16 former cross-border municipalities, and could thus have far-reaching implications for the local election, said Alastair Dickson, the respondents’ lawyer.

The community, represented by the Matatiele/Maluti Mass Action Committee, wants the court to rule on the constitutionality of the Twelfth Constitutional Amendment, gazetted on December 27 last year, which resets the provincial borders, and the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Act, gazetted on December 27, which realigns the boundaries of the affected municipalities.

The committee claims that in passing the Bills Parliament exceeded its powers, because although it may legally demarcate provinces, the demarcation of municipalities is the preserve of the constitutionally independent Municipal Demarcation Board.

The state argued that Parliament has the authority to demarcate provincial boundaries and that the Acts were promulgated for “purposes of alleviating the administrative constraints of cross-border municipalities, in the interests of the national government”.

Despite repeated questions from the judges, the respondents could not give a comprehensive answer as to why the two Bills had been enacted against community objections and the demarcation board’s decision.

The Matatiele community has drawn up a chronology of what it describes as a “decision … not apparently based on any merit factors but political and ulterior factors”. They are as follows:


 * May 2003: Matatiele municipality received a circular from the Municipal Demarcation Board advising it of the demarcation procedure. The municipality submitted its objections to being incorporated into the Eastern Cape, principally that it was wholly within KwaZulu-Natal and therefore not a cross-boundary municipality under the Municipal Structure Act. The government argued it made administrative sense to treat it as a cross-boundary municipality.


 * August 13: Two secret letters are written by the South African Police Service and sent to provincial commissioners, including that of KwaZulu-Natal, explaining that Sydney Mufamadi will announce on August 22 that Matatiele will be moved to the Eastern Cape, according to the applicants. “You are urged to optimise all sources to ensure that any information regarding protest or other destabilising actions in response to this announcement is pro-actively provided,” the letter allegedly reads. In his affidavit Mufamadi denies knowledge of these letters.

The applicants say this indicates that the executive had already decided Matatiele’s fate.


 * August 25: The Matatiele mayor, Cedric Canham, attends a meeting with the KwaZulu-Natal local government minister Mike Mabuyakhulu. Canham writes to the demarcation board indicating the council’s objection to being included in the Eastern Cape.


 * September 22: The Matatiele municipality delivers 3 248 individual representations and a petition carrying over 1 000 signatures to the demarcation board against incorporation.


 * October 13: The community meets Mufamadi, who assures them they will be listened to.


 * October 20: The demarcation board issues a declaration to the effect that Matatiele will stay in KwaZulu-Natal and be joined by Maluti, a small area on the Eastern Cape border.


 * October to December: Parliament and the National Council of Provinces, at the request of Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Brigitte Mabandla, “fast-track” the Twelfth Constitutional Amendment and repeal law, effectively annexing Matatiele to the Eastern Cape and overriding the demarcation board.

December 27: President Thabo Mbeki promulgates the Acts.


 * From: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=264593&area=/insight/insight__national/**

2019 words