THE national executive committee of South Africa's ruling African National Congress yesterday gave its approval to a plan to end divisive squabbling between ANC provincial leaders in the Orange Free State.
The plan, originally devised by the ANC national working committee and now endorsed by its national executive committee, involved the en masse resignation of the Free State premier, Mr Patrick Lekota, and ANC members of his provincial government, as well as the resignation of ANC's executive committee in the province.
It was preceded by at least two attempts by high level ANC emissaries to broker a truce between feuding ANC leaders in the Orange Free State. These attempts, however, failed to stem bitter, morale sapping snipping between the two factions, led, respectively, by Mr Lekota, who was a prisoner on Robben Island with President Mandela, and Mr Pat Matosa, who ousted Mr Lekota as ANC provincial leader two years ago.
In a recent radio interview in Sesotho - the dominant African language in the Free State - Mr Lekota tore into his rivals, describing one "a gun toting drunkard", accusing another of accepting R2 million from the National Party "when it was still killing people", and charging a third of squandering public funds totalling R7 million.
Mr Lekota's outburst - which he described as a repetition in Sesotho of what had been widely reported in English in the press and on radio and television - led his rivals to initiate party disciplinary charges against him.
The ANC's national executive committee announced yesterday that the process had begun for the election of a new provincial government by the ANC dominated provincial legislature and that an interim committee would handle party affairs until a new ANC provincial executive was elected.
Two further decisions were taken by the national leadership to suspend the disciplinary charges against Mr Lekota and to expedite investigations into allegations of corruption by the auditor general. While the ANC's national leadership felt it had to intervene in the interests of the party, questions have been asked about the constitutionality of its action.
As two researchers with the Centre for Policy Studies noted yesterday, the provincial legislature - accountable to the province's voters and constitutionally empowered to elect and depose the premier - appears to have been ignored by ANC national leaders. The intervention was seen by several participants at a conference on one party dominance in Cape Town last week as evidence of the ANC's scant regard for federalism and the right of provinces to settle their own affairs.