Province’s ANC Women’s League elects new top five

It was a clean sweep for newly elected Eastern Cape ANC Women’s League chair Ntandokazi Capa and her slate when they were elected unopposed at the weekend.

The OR Tambo regional deputy chair and council speaker was nominated unopposed for the position of provincial chair.

She was elected alongside Clara Yekiso, who emerged as her deputy chair, Siphokazi Sivuyise Mani-Lusithi takes over as secretary, Nomakhosazana Nongqayi is her deputy secretary and Nonkqubela Pieters becomes the new treasurer.

The league hosted its seventh congress in the province alongside three other provinces — Limpopo, the Free State and the Northern Cape — in the wake of the national conference last week where Komani’s Sisisi Tolashe emerged as the new league president.

Speaking after the top five were announced on Sunday, Tolashe congratulated the province and delegates for managing to elect new leaders without contestation.

“Contestation alone is very difficult for the organisation because we seem to put ourselves first before the organisation,” she said.

“We compete among ourselves to the extent that when we lose we go home cross, not talking to people, and for the first time since the unbanning we have eased that pain.”

Tolashe also thanked the task team which she said had resurrected the organisation from near death.

“This is the one time we built our organisation like we did after the unbanning, where we went house to house talking to our people and reminding them about their organisation and reminding them why they must renew their membership.

“When the [national, provincial and regional task teams] were elected, our organisation was in ICU.

“It was sick to the point of death — even if it was still barely alive — but because we love it we could not say so.

“Since the appointment of those structures, today we have more than 500 branches in good standing.

“The regional task teams made sure they established branches and had them ready for the conferences we are conducting and together we will develop a programme that will change people’s lives, especially women’s.

“Today we have audited branches that you can see and touch.

“We congratulate them for the job they did for us.

“Today we have renewed our hope that our people’s lives will change because there is now again a vehicle in the Eastern Cape called the women’s league that revived itself and is making sure it’s ready for the wars ahead.”

The conference will conclude on Monday.

HeraldLIVE