Sunday Times online ( 6/2/2008 ) — 02/06/2008
ANC AT WAR IN MANDELA’S UNIVERSITY TOWN
Xolani Xundu

Rival ANC factions club opponents in Alice, seat of Fort Hare University

ANC councillor Neliswa Nombombo is recovering from head injuries sustained in a fight between the supporters of President Thabo Mbeki and of ANC leader Jacob Zuma in Alice at the weekend. Alice is a dusty town at the foot of the Amathole Mountains . The roads have potholes that can pass for fish ponds. The town’s biggest employer, the University of Fort Hare, is slowly emigrating to East London, faculty by faculty. When someone finally locks the gate of Fort Hare ’s Alice campus, leaving behind the red face-brick buildings that have become synonymous with African academic excellence, the Nkonkobe municipality will have a major crisis on its hands - mass unemployment. [Fort Hare University College was the most important single centre of higher education for the political elite that overturned the regime of apartheid. Its alumni include former President Nelson Mandela, ANC president in exile Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki (father of President Mbeki and Robben Island veteran) and numerous other leaders of the African National Congress such as the assasinated Communist Party and Umkhonto weSizwe leader Chris Hani, as well as Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, leader of the ANC's formerly significant rival, the Pan Africanist Congress, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. - ed].

Assault on ANC woman councillor by rival faction
The reason for the exodus is that Alice does not offer anything for the lecturers and their families - no good schools for their children, no recreational facilities. But there are plenty of bottle stores. Liquor is so cheap in Alice that shebeen owners in Zwelitsha, about 60km away, drive past King Williams Town to buy their wares in this small town. Are these the things that worry the municipality and its leadership? It would seem not. The Daily Dispatch reported this week that chairs were flung across a hall and councillors piled into each other with sticks at the weekend at one of the villages when people from the Mbeki and Zuma camps clashed ahead of the local ANC branch’s annual general meeting. Ms Nombombo was rushed to hospital in Mdantsane in East London with severe wounds to her head and face. Three other councillors were treated at a hospital in Alice .
 
A mayor's tale of innocence
The mayor of Nkonkobe, Dumalisile Ngcuka, dismissed allegations that he was responsible for sparking the fight in Alice and that his pro-Mbeki group disrupted the meeting as it was about to take place. But others, including councillor Ncediwe Booi, pinned the blame on him. Nombombo, claimed Booi, was 'slapped by the mayor and he hit her with a table and she fell down. As she was trying to stand up, four men came with chairs and sticks and beat her up. A chair was thrown at me and I was beaten with a stick , but I managed to run outside.'  Ngcuka denied Booi’s account. 'That is a fabricated story. I am not that kind of a person and you can ask anyone who was there. I was only admonishing her [Nombombo] because she was misbehaving. I did not slap her.'
 
Will Mbeki-Zuma dichotomy define next 10 years?
Councillor Anele Ntsangani, who was also caught up in the fracas, said his car was damaged during the fight. 'They broke my windscreen and I was lucky that it did not crash on my face,’'he said. The question now is whether the organisation will ever heal itself. Or is the Mbeki-Zuma dichotomy going to define politics in the ruling party for the 10 years of Zuma’s presidency? It is time for the party faithful to move on and accept that Zuma was democratically elected by the majority in Polokwane. It is the people of Nkonkobe who will suffer the most when the mayor and his councillors are not on speaking terms.

[Note by Ever-fasternews: It is clear that a criminal assault, or assaults, took place at Alice at the meeting at which Councillor Nombombo received her injuries, but it is not at all clear whether a police investigation will take place and charges laid. Once again there is the question of whether some South Africans are more equal than others, and whether the African National Congress - or this or that faction in the party - is or is not above the Constitution. For a criminal assault to be above the law at the historic seat of the University of Fort Hare, where former President Nelson Mandela himself studied law, and which now holds the Nelson R Mandela School of Law and the Oliver Tambo School of Human Rights, would be a definitive statement as to where 14 years of ANC government has brought South Africa.
 
There is also a further possible issue. Alice is in the Eastern Cape where isiXhosa is the predominant language. This was the heartland of political support for the government of President Mbeki, himself a Xhosa-speaker, and the most secure base in his failed candidacy last December for a further term as ANC president. His successor as ANC president, Jacob Zuma, won the overwhelming support of Zulu-speaking members of the ANC in his successful campaign. It is not impossible that tribal factioneering lay at the base of the assault on Ms Nombombo. Ever-fasternews calls on the Fort Hare Alumni asssociation and the Fort Hare Foundation to issue a statement calling for normal due process of law to have effect in this disgraceful episode, which dishonours one of the most honoured sites in South African educational, cultural and political life, and which sets a foul example of civic practice to the nation. It gives a further indication of the wrong-headedness of destroying the most effective prosecutorial agency in the country, the Scorpions. - Ed].