ANC KZN’s endorsing Phumulo Masualle is divisive move, Oscar Mabuyane says

ANC Eastern Cape provincial chair and deputy president hopeful Oscar Mabuyane believes the move by the provincial executive committee (PEC) of KwaZulu-Natal to endorse his provincial colleague, Phumulo Masualle, before engaging with them, smacks of an attempt to divide the province before ANC’s national elective conference in December.

Masualle was endorsed by the KwaZulu-Natal PEC to contest for secretary-general under former health minister Zweli Mkhize’s slate. 

Mabuyane said his leadership had since engaged with Masualle with a view to ensuring the alleged mission to split the province’s vote at the national conference did not succeed.

According to Mabuyane, the Eastern Cape would not allow itself to be made “voting cows” at the December 16-20 elective conference, where new national leaders will be chosen.

His said his aim as provincial chair was to “consolidate” the province and ensure it spoke with one voice at the conference, to be held at Nasrec in Gauteng.

“We had not been engaged by KwaZulu-Natal. Our view was that this [endorsement of Masualle] was an attempt to divide the Eastern Cape,” Mabuyane said.

“It was never a genuine move. It was always an attempt to divide us in this province because of a fallacy that the Eastern Cape can be divided into 50-50 or 60-40. Going for comrade Phumulo has never been a genuine move, because if it was it would have been organic from the Eastern Cape.”

The Eastern Cape premier said the manoeuvre by KwaZulu-Natal was premised on an incorrect perception that his leadership was in conflict with Masualle.

That could not be further from the truth, he said, because it was the Mabuyane-led Eastern Cape that lobbied for Masualle to be elected into the ANC national executive committee (NEC) at the 2017 national conference.

“We supported comrade Phumulo in 2017. That is why he is in the NEC. It is us who protected him until he finished his term as premier in 2019. We have met comrade Phumulo as a province through the provincial secretary. I have spoken to him personally when we met in the last NEC meeting. The main issue is about how to consolidate our province.”

In Mabuyane’s view, Masualle is not an active participant in the agenda of the forces determined to divide the Eastern Cape, but he too is “a victim of those moonlighting [in] our province and thinking they can create factions, make the Eastern Cape useless, mute it and make sure it does not stand for anything”.

This was something Mabuyane said he would not allow.

“No-one is going to use the Eastern Cape again as voting cows. We are not going to fall for the trick. We have a view, we are a province, we must be heard, we must be understood and respected, as we respect everyone we work with.”

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