Coping with fakes

Political tyro Lynda Odendaal has parted ways with COPE, an ANC breakaway party. Picture: Doris Nzimande


IT was hailed as the party which was ushering in a new era in South African politics. But those who had the eyes to see and the presence of mind saw the Congress of the People (COPE) for what it really was and still is – a bunch of Polokwane rejects with an insatiable appetite for power.

From the time COPE was formed there was nothing alternative about it. The party had no inch of originality. COPE was hell-bent on stealing, hijacking and claiming the policies and the history of the ANC. Even the party’s name, COPE, is some sort of thieving. It was at the “Congress of the People” in 1955 in Kliptown that the Freedom Charter was adopted. Any self-respecting individual cannot say the ANC and its allies had nothing to do with the adoption of the charter.

COPE positioned itself as a “New Agenda for Change”. But it is more like a “new agenda to short-change” the public. The resignations of the party’s second deputy president Lynda Odendaal and head of elections Simon Grindrod come as no surprise at all. Grindrod has finally seen the light. “COPE promised an agenda for hope and change for all South Africans. It is becoming abundantly clear to me that ‘hope’ is in decline, there is no ‘change’ from ANC practices, and the only South Africans setting the ‘agenda’ are current and former ANC members, to the exclusion of all others,” he said.

The former Independent Democrats man also charges in his resignation letter that COPE has perpetrated a great fraud against the electorate. Grindrod deserves no sympathy because his gullibility led him to join COPE, despite his former leader Patricia de Lille’s warning that COPE was merely “ANC lite”.

COPE, just like the pre-Polokwane ANC, does not want to admit internal power wars and factional infighting have beset it. The party’s rabble-rouser, leader Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, is apparently under siege, just like his dearest master former President Thabo Mbeki was leading up to Polokwane.

COPE is a very divided house and it would appear that Odendaal and Grindrod were just there to attract the white vote. So much for the much-vaunted racially inclusive COPE.

There was nothing phenomenal about COPE coming into being. Definitely it could have not been an alternative party to the ANC. COPE generated so much interest because it was just before elections and shortly after Polokwane.

Most importantly, the opportunistic COPE capitalised on the prevailing anti-Jacob Zuma sentiment among the middle class and the elite. The party is not new per se, because had it not been for its ANC connection (therefore its parasitic nature) it would have not performed so well in the April 22 general elections.

The only change that COPE brought about in the post-1994 SA politics was that for the first time the ruling party experienced a downward trend (in percentage terms) in an election. Of course, the coalition of Mbekites stopped the ANC from getting a two-thirds majority.

COPE is in decline. It would be no surprise if there could be a further splinter group coming out of the embattled party. Come the 2014 general elections, COPE will get less than its current 30 MP seats.

History shows that breakaway groupings such as United Democratic Movement perform worse than in the previous election. COPE’s grave has been dug… it’s just a matter of when death comes.

This article originally appeared in The Citizen newspaper today (Friday July 10, 2009).