By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
COPE’s congress national committee (CNC), its highest decision-making body, has placed party President Mosiuoa Lekota on precautionary suspension.
The announcement was made by COPE’s deputy president, Willie Madisha, during a media briefing on Monday in Kempton Park.
Party spokesperson Denis Bloem says Lekota has been placed on precautionary suspension, not only for sowing divisions, but also for alleged corruption and promoting the removal of elected leaders.
“He promotes and supports actions against which Cope was formed, those actions include corruption, removal of elected leaders and representatives such as councillors.
“The Cope national leadership advised him on several occasions that given his lack of energy and strength to lead the party at the moment, he must step back. Although he agreed on all those occasions, he did not do so.
Given his health conditions, he is not able to perform what the party and all South Africans expect him to do, which is to attend to the work of Parliament.”
However, Lekota has hit back at the party’s leadership for his suspension, saying the move holds no water.
“The letter I received telling me that it is suspending me, it’s of people who have no status in telling me that they are suspending me. I don’t know, it is not in the letterhead of the party. It’s some strange letterhead that I don’t even know. So I don’t think that you should be hanging much on that.”
COPE, was officially launched in Bloemfotein on December 16, 2008,
In 2009 elections, held on April 22, COPE won 7 percent of the national vote, finishing in third place, behind the ANC and the Democratic Alliance.
Cope promising start quickly lost momentum. The next year, a leadership battle between Lekota and Sam Shilowa took centre stage, harming the party’s credibility.
The battle between Lekota and Shilowa resulted in more than a dozen court cases, and a high court ruled in October 2013 that the rightful leader of COPE was Lekota.
He was re-elected president at the party’s national congress, held in January 2014.
The lengthy leadership squabble left the party in a weakened state to contest the 2014 elections, and COPE won less than 1 percent of the national vote. The party garnered less than 1 percent of the vote again in the 2019 national elections.