ANC man booed off stage at SACP KZN funeral
Former African National Congress KwaZulu-Natal secretary Sipho Gcabashe was booed off the stage at the funeral of an SA Communist Party member in Inchanga on Sunday.
Gcabashe, who was addressing an estimated 2000 mourners at Philip Dlamini’s funeral, was forced to ?cut his speech short, an ANA correspondent reported.
SACP provincial chairman James Nxumalo and eThekwini metro municipality deputy mayor Nomvuzo Shabalala had to intervene to? calm the angry crowd at the Kandokweni sport ground in Fredville, Inchanga, about halfway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
“Gcabashe represents a structure elected by thugs and now they are messing up everything,” said an SACP member, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Dlamini was shot dead at the same sport ground last Sunday as he was attending an SACP meeting.
This week, the SACP provincial leadership said it believed the shooting resulted from a failed attempt to kill Nxumalo, who lives in the area.
At the time of the shooting, an ANC meeting to nominate candidates for Ward Four was underway about 3km from the SACP gathering.
Another man was also killed in the shooting and several cars were damaged.
Tensions between the ANC and the SACP have been so high that on Thursday the SACP’s provincial executive committee announced that the party was pulling out of all processes to nominate ANC candidates for the upcoming local government elections.
SACP provincial secretary Themba Mthembu said on Thursday the SACP wanted to see an overwhelming ANC victory in the elections, but this would not happen unless the process of nominating candidates was “community centred” and did not involve marginalising people by infighting.
?
“The PEC is now highly convinced that without a national intervention on this process, this nomination process is again going to be hijacked by criminals, thugs, and commercial racketeers.”
The SACP was unapologetic about its demand that communities be at the centre of the candidate nomination process.
?Mthembu said the decision had been taken after Dlamini’s shooting, but the SACP had been unhappy with the nomination process for some time.
Gcabashe was elected to the ANC’s national executive committee in 2012 and is currently a member of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature.