Members of ANC electoral committee distance themselves from Sisulu comments

SOME members of the ANC electoral committee have distanced themselves and refused to be drawn into the comments made by spokesperson for the committee, Livhuwani Matsila, and the accusations that the commission has been enlisted to ensure that Minister of Tourism Lindiwe Sisulu’s candidacy for the position of ANC president at the 55th elective conference in Nasrec does not see the light of day.

This is after Matsila, without being mandated by the committee, said that Sisulu did not meet the threshold to be one of the contenders for the ANC’s top position.

Some members are of the view that what Matsila did could bring the committee into disrepute, especially if Sisulu is able to prove defects in the process.

Also, they concede that Sisulu’s letter was treated differently from other disputes because “we normally discuss and look into the merits of each case, but this one was not even discussed or brought to our attention”, said one member who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In turn, another member said, “Sisulu could easily and understandably accuse the ANC electoral commission of doing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bidding of ensuring that he wins the upcoming race to retain his position as the ANC president at all costs, at the expense (of) our individual credibilities because of our own internal lapses and people using this committee for their own personal ambitions.

“The member wishes that Sisulu’s case was entertained and looked at rather than being attacked in the public media by someone we didn’t even authorise to speak on our behalf. People are just desperate for fame at our expense,” the member went on to say.

Sisulu, who was this week “artificially eliminated” from the race due to what the commission termed “inadequate nominations”, said the chairperson of the commission, Kgalema Motlanthe, was not the author of the letter written to her after she lodged the dispute on the number of irregularities in the nomination outcomes, which are not consistent with the number of nominations she received.

“The letter, which was written at night, was not discussed; it was just handled by an individual who had to cover his tracks. The letter was not even seen by the committee members; some only came across it in the media.”

When asked if they would speak out, they stated that they were afraid of being victimised, claiming that many wrongs were occurring in the committee, and thus they had distanced themselves from Matsila’s public reaction.

Sisulu had questioned why the commission was refusing to give her access to the “audited raw data” of nomination outcomes, which resulted in Ramaphosa competing for the presidency with Dr Zweli Mkhize.

She said the release of these numbers would be able to lift a cloud of irregularities that has made her a casualty of corruption and allow her to contest the position of ANC president at the upcoming conference.

According to those who are sympathetic to Sisulu, the commission was colluding with the president, adding that this is a ploy to ensure that Ramaphosa wins by nook or crook. They don’t rule out that Mkhize, who faces allegations of corruption against him, won’t be charged in the next two weeks, so that Ramaphosa is not contested.

“This is all about ensuring that Ramaphosa wins. They know that Zweli Mkhize is on the back foot. They have eliminated Sisulu from the race and ensured that she does not participate as she could give Ramaphosa stiff competition because they know that Zweli Mkhize will be charged in the next two weeks,” the women’s league leader told The Star.

Sisulu, who has been one of the strongest critics of Ramaphosa in the run-up to the 55th ANC National Conference, has been seen as a threat to Ramaphosa’s second-term bid. Some within the ANC have also accused Ramaphosa of trying to buy the elections through the ANC electoral commission and other structures.

On Friday, Sisulu wrote a letter to Motlanthe and the ANC electoral commission, requesting access to the raw data, which resulted in her being granted permission to study the nominations and their outcomes.

This comes after she had lodged a dispute over the nomination outcomes after her name was not included on the list of those set to challenge Ramaphosa as ANC president in Nasrec.

She said in her second letter to Motlanthe: “From the onset, let me indicate you do seem to have misread the fundamental elements of my letter to you and your committee.

“In the main, what I was requesting from you and your esteemed committee is the raw audited data of my nominations from all the branches that have nominated me. This request is premised on the fact that you are the responsible committee tasked with dealing with such matters as mandated by the ANC. I am requesting that you retrieve all my nominations as tabulated and give them to me. I think that this is both fair and natural justice to honour my request.”

On Thursday, Sisulu filed a dispute with the committee, claiming she had received enough nominations to be a contender for the ANC presidency after meeting the expected 25% threshold, according to what her team was filing from all the BGMs across the country, while Matsila claimed she only received 66 votes, compared with Ramaphosa’s 2,037 and Mkhize’s 916.

“We have reliable information in our possession, which emanates from our filing system and clearly shows our filed nominations from the BGM regarding LS candidacy for the position of president of the ANC do not correlate with and are inconsistent with the spreadsheet that guided you during your public announcement.

“Although our own filed nominations in my name met the expected threshold of support, our LS candidacy was not included in the list of candidates for the position of president. My team therefore requests to know what happened,” she said in the dispute letter.

Matsila has denied allegations that the committee cooked the numbers to ensure that Sisulu was eliminated from the race to contest Ramaphosa.

This is despite complaints in that region that Matsila had tempered with Sisulu’s nominations in both the Vhembe and Mopani regions.

Speaking to The Star, the spokesperson for the committee said they had seen the letter requesting the committee to provide raw audited data and would be responding in the coming week.

“We have seen her letter to us from Friday. We are not in a rush to respond to her, but we will respond in due time sometime next week. This is not something that needs to be rushed, but only a response, which we will give next week,” Matsila said.

The question is: What is difficult about acceding to Sisulu’s request? What could be the cause of the delay instead of just retrieving her file and giving it to her?

Sisulu’s team, which is predominantly led by women, was adamant that Sisulu was still in the race, saying a lot could still happen on the floor at the conference.

We will leave it to the public to draw its own conclusions.

- THE STAR