ANC Women's League accepts decision to remove Zandile Gumede as Durban mayor

The ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) has accepted the reasons for the removal of Durban mayor Zandile Gumede from the post.

This comes a day after its president, Bathabile Dlamini, threatened that a new party could be formed by disgruntled women. She said she wanted to find out from the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal why it had made the decision to axe Gumede from the powerful position.

On Wednesday evening, outside the KZN ANC offices in Durban, Dlamini refused to engage with journalists about the threats, which were made at an ANCWL event in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

Dlamini remained unperturbed by questions flung at her as she left the meeting.

Dlamini's visit coincided with a provincial executive committee (PEC) meeting, which commenced on Wednesday, to discuss the redeployment of its eThekwini and uMsunduzi executive committee members.

Despite waiting hours to engage with Dlamini over her remarks about the new generation of women leaders, who she said were likely to form their own feminist organisation in the near future, members of the media were shunned by the former minister of women in the presidency and social development. 

Instead, Dlamini referred all questions to the league's secretary-general, Meokgo Matuba. 

Matuba said the league had no problems with the ANC's decision regarding Gumede. She said the party had furnished it with a report that ultimately led to its decision to axe on the embattled mayor. 

"If there are issues, if there was an assessment, we know that as a deployee of the ANC, you will be assessed, and definitely after receiving the outcome, you will be told that these are the practical steps that the ANC will take in terms of a correcting or improving on its services," said Matuba.

She said the league would abide by any decision taken by the ANC.

This follows Dlamini's comments on Tuesday that she was not happy that it was "easy" to remove women leaders in the party.

"We are going to meet with KZN officials ... [We are] very unhappy about the culture of making it easy to remove women [from] positions of power," said Dlamini.

She said women in the party were not demanding positions in the ANC because they wanted to be seen as high flyers.

Gumede is seen as a close ally of former president Jacob Zuma and part of the so-called "RET forces" faction in the ANC, which Dlamini is also understood to be part of. RET is an acronym for radical economic transformation. 

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