A faction of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) has accused African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General Ace Magashule of dividing young people.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the group claims Magashule is fuelling divisions within Cosas to serve his ambition to become ANC President at the party’s next conference.
“Cde Ace Magashule must stop dividing young people of this country through structures, simply because he wants to settle his interests of becoming President of ANC in the next National Conference,” the group said.
‘Magashule taking sides’
Cosas, which is aligned to the ANC, held two rival national conferences in September and therefore has two parallel leaderships.
One is led by ANC MP Itumeleng Ntsube as president. He is reportedly Magashule’s ally. The other grouping has Thabang Mokoena as its president.
Tuesday’s statement was issued by Mokoena and Cosas Secretary General Mzwakhe Gwegwe.
They said they had written to both Magashule and ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa in a bid to resolve the leadership crisis.
However, they claimed Magashule has sided with Ntsube’s faction, to the point of instructing security personnel at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg to bar them from accessing it.
Appeal to ANC
Mokoena and Gwegwe appealed to the ANC to “check” Magashule’s “recent unbecoming and foreign behaviour.”
They said, “We are now requesting ANC to thoroughly check the conduct of Cde Ace Magashule and reprimand him from using his ANC’s position wrongly by entertaining political battles of PYA Structures.”
They hoped that ANC and its alliance partners would intervene to restore Cosas to its “known state.”
“Cde Ace Magashule is not above the ANC and therefore must be called into order.
“He is way out of order to take sides on battles of young people because of his personal interests and we are not going to be shy to tell him,” they concluded.
Neither the ANC nor Magashule has reacted to the statement.