Tension is simmering between Limpopo ANC provincial executive committee member Makoma Makhurupetje and her colleagues Thabo Mokone and Basikopo Makamu, whom she accuses of engineering her exclusion from the provincial working committee and ANC Women’s League national task team.
At least eight provincial ANC leaders were voted to the provincial working committee during the newly elected PEC’s meeting in Polokwane, while the Women’s League task team members were recommended by the party’s national working committee on Monday.
Sunday World has learnt from senior PEC members that Makhurupetje has complained bitterly to her close associates that Mokone and Makamu sabotaged her incorporation into the PWC and Women’s League task team, which was formed after the disbandment of the league.
Coincidentally, the warring trio is from the Norman Mashabane region, the party’s biggest region in the province.
The cold war, which has the potential to divide the PEC, started brewing last week after the election of the provincial working committee members.
Makoma, who is said to have been optimistic she would be elected to the PWC, and automatically included in premier Stan Mathabatha’s next provincial cabinet, got hot under the collar when she was snubbed, allegedly at Mokone’s behest.
“She phoned several PEC members and complained that comrade Thabo orchestrated her exclusion from the PWC because he doesn’t want her to be an MEC,” said the member who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation.
Mathabatha, who was re-elected as the party’s provincial chairperson in Polokwane early this month, is said to be under pressure from his allies to reshuffle the cabinet and cast aside MEC for agriculture Nandi Ndalane; sports MEC Thandi Moraka; transport MEC Dickson Masemola; treasury MEC Seaparo Sekwati and MEC for education Polly Boshielo, who were not elected to the PEC.
Makhurupetje’s expectation, said the member, was to be rewarded with the position of MEC because her region voted for Mathabatha.
Another member said Makhurupetje also complained that Makamu sabotaged her, and that she “was dealt with” because she swung both ways when she supported Masemola and Mathabatha’s factions in the build up to the elective congress. “She opportunistically supported Mathabatha’s election at the conference after it became crystal clear that his rival coterie was losing the election.”
The member alleged “Makhurupetje shot herself in the foot again” when she “attended several meetings with the CR22 core [those backing President Cyril Rampahosa’s re-election bid] and bad-mouthed leaders in the province. We are aware of the badmouthing … and for that she will never get any MEC position.”
Makhurupetje declined to comment.
“The question is who leaked this non-issue to the media? The people who are subjecting this matter to the media are ill disciplined and counter revolutionary,” she said
Mokone said: “If the branches have decided… who am I to speak [a] foreign language to them?”
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