Tense standoff at Luthuli House

Sustained intimidation and late-night appeals from party bosses stopped disgruntled ANC members from trying to shut down Luthuli House, the party’s national head office, in the Johannesburg CBD yesterday.

Leaders of the #OccupyLuthuliHouse campaign said they feared for their lives and those of their supporters but defied appeals by senior party members to cancel their march.

Their campaign is aimed at getting President Jacob Zuma to quit as party leader and the entire membership of the party’s powerful national executive committee to resign.

The ANC beefed up security in anticipation of the rebellion, and police closed off streets and set up razor-wire barriers.

The Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA) dispatched more than 100 members – some of them carrying firearms – to block the protesters.

Members of the ANC Youth League also turned up to defend the headquarters.

Armed “veterans” repeatedly clashed with the media, forcibly removing journalists from pavements outside Luthuli House, and preventing photographers and video cameramen from taking pictures.

“You must voetsek. You people are scum, filth. F***ing pigs, who must die. If you do this [recording] you will be sorry,” several veterans screamed at journalists.

Foreign journalists were pushed away from Luthuli House and told they were not welcome in South Africa.

“You are imperialists. F**k off back to your lands. You will leave here in coffins.”

Gauteng police spokesman Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said the police were unaware of weapons being brandished by veterans at the demonstration – although they would have been evident to anyone at the scene.

Times Media has established that last-minute frantic calls by “senior ANC leaders” convinced the march organisers to scale down to prevent an ugly confrontation with Zuma supporters.

Earlier in the day, the organisers announced that they had called on their supporters not to come because “we are aware that self-proclaimed defenders of Luthuli House have the aid of state machinery to cause disruptions”.

“If we also came with more numbers, it would have been bloody – it would have been very ugly,” Ronald Lamola, former ANC Youth League deputy president, said.

He said the group was now lobbying other ANC leaders and structures to make a public call for Zuma and the entire national executive committee to resign and hold an early conference.

Another organiser said concerns were raised by Luthuli House that the MKMVA and ANCYL had taken positions that could lead to violent clashes.

“They were worried that the general public would join in and this would lead to a bigger protest,” a march organiser said. “We did not want to stop the march so we compromised and scaled it down.”

MKMVA chairman Kebby Maphatsoe had to intervene and order his members to allow ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe to take delivery of the marchers’ memorandum of demands.

Inside Luthuli House, there was shouting and screaming in what seemed to be a stormy confrontation between those who wanted to allow the marchers to present their memorandum and those who supported the veterans’ attempts to block the marchers.

ANCYL sources said they were upset by the veterans’ attempts to stop Mantashe accepting the memorandum.

“We should have taken the higher ground. Those who were behind the #OccupyLuthuliHouse left on the higher ground,” the source said.

“They were peaceful. All these old men wanted to do was fight wars they never got to finish.”