Cape Town - Two ANC councillors from Gugulethu are in danger of losing their seats after a finding by an internal party investigation that their nominations for the local government elections in 2011 were flawed.
Aaron Motsoaledi, the ANC national executive committee member deployed to the Western Cape, warned on Sunday that the two councillors would forfeit their positions on the Cape Town council if new people were nominated in their place.
“If the new nomination process by ANC branches and the public selects different candidates, then there will have to be new by-elections,” he said.
Motsoaledi’s remarks follow the party’s promise to clean up its processes for nominating candidates after an investigation by an ANC task team found the nominations of 125 ANC candidates for the previous municipal elections were flawed.
Task team chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma visited 419 wards across the country over 12 months to investigate allegations of irregularities after the party received more than 4 000 complaints about nominations and several people stormed the ANC offices in Cape Town.
The ANC opened up its nominations process to community members, and not just members of party branches, in 2011.
In the Western Cape, the task team looked at 10 wards in Cape Town and three in the Overberg.
Dlamini Zuma’s task team found that the processes leading to the nominations of Mzwakhe Nqavashe from Ward 40 and Coetzee Ntotoviyane from Ward 42, both in Gugulethu, had been flawed and recommended that the party begin the processes afresh.
Motsoaledi did not want to say what the flaws were.
“This is an internal party matter,” Motsoaledi said. He has been to the province several times in the past two weeks to discuss election manipulation and fraud in the ANC in the run-up to the local government elections in 2011.
He and ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman visited the two councillors on Sunday to inform them of the party’s plans.
Fransman said branches in these two wards would restart the process to nominate a candidate for councillor. Local community meetings would also be held.
Nqavashe represented his branch at the ANC national conference in Mangaung last year after he was chosen. At the previous national conference in 2007 the branch was represented by former ANC provincial chairman Mcebisi Skwatsha.
Nqavashe supported Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to replace President Jacob Zuma as party leader.
Ntotoviyane said on Sunday that he had been informed by his branch chairperson that the nomination process had been reopened.
“One thing I must make clear is, there was nothing wrong with my nomination. I will accept whatever the ANC’s leaders decide.”
Motsoaledi said the ANC was prepared to lose the two council seats in by-elections if “the right thing was done and the correct nomination process was followed”.
Cape Times