Durban -
Minority Front leaders have dismissed a widely circulated e-mail that claims party leader, Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi, was set to be removed, as “pure hoax” and “malicious mischief”.
Editors and several reporters were e-mailed a letter on Monday bearing the MF logo on the letterhead which claimed that Deenadayalan Govender, “Thakur-Rajbansi’s arch nemesis”, was set to become party leader.
The letter had the contact details of party spokesman, Patrick Pillay, and Govender attached to it.
It claimed that a National Executive Committee meeting was called last Friday, where the signatories of the party were changed as part of a first step in the “wholesale removal of Thakur-Rajbansi from the party’s leadership”.
The letter claimed Thakur-Rajbansi had operated the MF according to the caste system and looked down on people from other Indian ethnic groups.
Pillay and Govender said they did not know who was behind the letter.
Pillay said they would lodge a complaint with the police.
He said he had fielded calls from several media outlets enquiring about the e-mail.
“I don’t know who sent that out. It is nothing but malicious mischief. It is difficult to know who it is and to point fingers, but it is definitely the work of a mischief-maker.”
Govender said: “All I can say is that it is a hoax.”
Govender was suspended by the party last year after claims that he had helped the DA in a by-election
Since the death of party leader, Amichand Rajbansi, the MF has been bleeding support in its heartlands of Chatsworth and Phoenix, where it lost two wards to the DA in recent by-elections.
The loss meant the MF also lost its only seat on the eThekwini executive council.
In the May 7 election, last year the MF lost its only seat in the National Assembly while its two seats in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature were reduced to one. This meant the party had lost a huge portion of the funding previously received and was forced to close its offices in Newcastle and Newlands, Durban.
In recent months the party has been racked by in-fighting with Pillay leading the charge against Thakur-Rajbansi.
In a letter to the Daily News’s sister paper, Sunday Tribune, earlier this month after Thakur-Rajbansi had written about the “greed and foolishness by some councillors”, Pillay accused her of “stooping to the lowest level of cheap politicking” by airing her grievances in public.
Thakur-Rajbansi, in her letter to the paper, said that after seeing off an onslaught from former MF MP Roy Bhoola - who resigned from the party - she “single-handedly planned and fought the May 7 general elections”.
“I received little help from the remaining members, who were not experienced in parliamentary elections. I won a seat in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, where I now serve.”
In a reply a week later to the paper, Pillay wrote: “Shameen has expressed one truth among these lies, that since she has become the leader, the party has lost five by-elections, the only national seat, one provincial seat and the only executive committee seat in eThekwini.
“This speaks volumes for her non-performance during her reign in the past three years.”
He said the “sad reality” was that she had not campaigned in the by-elections because she was busy with a government-sponsored academic course in Pretoria.
“The implications that she has won the many parliamentary seats when Amichand was alive is laughable and undermines his worth.
“No member is after any positions hence they want accountability from her as leader… Shameen’s nonsensical statement and allegations made against councillor Deenadayalan Govender and other senior councillors are lies, reminiscent of a desperate individual, hell-bent on destroying every righteous person within the party,” he wrote.
Pillay blamed confusion among voters for the loss of wards 52 and 73 to the DA.
He also accused the media of having helped the DA.
“Voter apathy also played a very significant role in the low voter turnout.
“The DA’s victory was based on a very clandestine strategy to destroy the MF, poaching our members at any cost and using the same members to execute a smear campaign about the MF, thus it impacted on the results,” he said.
Pillay said his party was “not daunted” by the setback and would continue to serve its constituency.
Daily News