Firebrand Cope MP Anele Mda is the latest to be rumoured to be on her way out of the ailing party, but she chose to remain silent on the issue.
The speculation within the party about her departure followed reports of the imminent resignation of the party’s Limpopo chairman and MPL, Sello Moloto, to take up an ambassadorship in Mozambique.
Insiders close to him, however, said Moloto, who was not available for comment, wanted to leave because he was tired of the infighting among the party’s top leaders, but he still believed in the party and was unlikely to resign.
Moloto last year emerged as a possible compromise candidate for the leadership of the party amid a tussle between current party president Mosiuoa Lekota and his challenger, Mbhazima Shilowa, but the plan to push Moloto never came to fruition.
Mda made scathing remarks about Cope in The Justice Factor on e.tv over the weekend.
She criticised the party for being absent from the national political scene. A party insider said if Mda did not resign, action was likely to be taken against her after the May 18 local government elections.
Mda was asked by Independent Newspapers whether she planned to leave the party and commented on the matter, but later called back to withdraw her responses. She refused to give a reason for this.
Moloto’s imminent departure from the party - it is reported that he is set to be posted to Maputo any time from next month - follows the public defection at a press conference of the party’s Gauteng leader, John Ngcebetsha, former spokesman JJ Tabane and former national congress committee member Lunga Kepe, last week.
A source close to Moloto, however, said he did not want to be “paraded by the ANC at rallies”, which is why it had taken him almost a year to be persuaded to accept the ambassadorship.
The source said it would be similar to what the DA’s Tony Leon and Douglas Gibson did when they accepted diplomatic postings. These two resigned their positions in Parliament, but remained DA members.
Moloto has, according to the insider, not formally informed the party about his reported departure yet.
Mda has been plagued by controversy since the founding of Cope.
She was suspended from her leadership positions in 2009 after she hurled insults at fellow party leader Deidre Carter, but she was reinstated after she apologised.
Meanwhile, one of the party’s leaders in Gauteng, Lyndall Shope-Mafole, yesterday told SABC news while on the campaign trail in Swanieville on the West Rand that the defection of some of the party’s senior leaders back to the ANC should clear up any misconceptions about the party in the local government elections. -Political Bureau