Cape Town — The fight for the leadership of the Congress of the People (COPE) turned ugly last night when embattled leader Mosiuoa Lekota criticised deputy Mbhazima Shilowa for allegedly mismanaging constituency support funds.
He also accused COPE's youth movement of trying to silence him ahead of next month's elective conference.
In a hastily convened news conference, Lekota reacted to Tuesday's harsh criticism of him by the youth movement - he was called a dictator - by accusing Shilowa, as the "chief whip and accounting officer" of the party in Parliament, of failing to obey the law and failing to have the constituency support funds of the party audited for more than a year.
He said the main plank of COPE's election manifesto was to fight corruption, but with its parliamentary finances in a shambles it could not tell voters it could be trusted with public money.
At issue are the constituency support funds paid to all political parties on the basis of the number of MPs they have. Lekota said the combined constituency allowances and other payments were about R20m.
The party was supposed to have appointed auditors within two months of going to Parliament last May but this had not been done.
He said he had insisted last month, after the matters had come to his attention, on detailed reports . A "belated attempt" was made to appoint Anton Louw as auditor.
But he accused Shilowa of dating the letter June 2009 when Louw's records showed Shilowa's personal assistant had e-mailed the letter on March 8 this year, almost a year late. Lekota said he had raised this discrepancy in a meeting of the party's working committee . "There has been no satisfactory response."
Lekota said the recent "negative lobbying" in party structures was an attempt to remove the party leadership to cover up these "alleged irregular financial practices".
"I have ... repeatedly raised a number of issues with the congress working committee of COPE that have left me deeply worried as the president of this organisation as it has failed to address these.
"These relate to the possible mismanagement of public funds and even possible fraud with relation to moneys allocated to the party ."
He refused to speculate on whether the recent attacks on him had been orchestrated by Shilowa.
Shilowa could not be reached for comment as he is out of SA.
Youth movement leader Anele Mda said last night it was strange Lekota chose to go to the media rather than bring the information before party structures. She said it would be unfortunate if the revelations were part of a campaign to tarnish Shilowa's image before the elective conference.
Mda said Lekota was not "above party structures" and a decision to probe any financial mismanagement had to be taken by a leadership collective. "This (revelation) is just sour grapes."
With Sibongakonke Shoba
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The best thing that has ever happened to the South African political landscape is the birth of COPE. It came as a relief and, indeed, a beacon of hope and choice vis-a-vis the stiffling, monopolistic and hegemonistic ANC church. What COPE leaders and all COPE membership should take into cognizance is that, they are an alternative voice--in South African politics--climbing a very steep hill against the organisation which will be celebrating its centenary come the year 2012...a party which has also gone through a lot of turbulences but have stood the acid test of time. For COPE to be the third largest opposition party in Parliament; after so short a space of time for wooing the voters,is an unprecedented feat, a miracle of some sorts. They should take a leaf out of ANC's book that Rome was not built in one day. Instead of engaging in public spats, they should summon enough courage and sit down on the drawing board and identify what went wrong with a view to putting their train back on it rails. Both Lekota and Shilowa should walk in the footsteps of Obama and Mrs Clinton during the US electioneering campaigns. Despite the fact that they had agressive slotching at each other's throats, they finally came to a truce to work together for the sake of the Democratic Party.