The ANC did not come to the Women’s League to ask for its opinion. It came to deliver a verdict.
That was the unmistakable tone of a special ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) national executive committee (NEC) meeting on Saturday, where secretary general Fikile Mbalula briefed the league’s leadership on a decision already taken by the mother body, one that places the presidency of Sisisi Tolashe on a knife-edge, regardless of what the Women’s League chooses to do next.
The ANC’s national executive committee has endorsed the Integrity Commission’s recommendation that Tolashe step aside as ANCWL president and as an ANC NEC member in her own right. The matter has been formally referred to the ANC’s national disciplinary committee, which must conclude its work within three months. That process, Mbalula made clear, has already begun, with or without the Women’s League’s blessing.
“The decision of the NEC is the decision of taking these matters to the national disciplinary committee, as it is recommended and decided upon by the national executive committee,” Mbalula said. “The processes of the disciplinary committee have been undertaken as we speak, and the president of the Women’s League has also been informed.”
The message to the ANCWL was unambiguous that the ANC has moved; now the Women’s League must decide what to do with its own president in the interim, not whether the process will happen, but how they position themselves while it does.
“The Women’s League may take decisions on this matter in relation to their president; that, meanwhile, the case is going through the disciplinary committee, the president may want to step aside once that case has been finalised,” Mbalula said. “But that in itself is a decision of the Women’s League.”
Tolashe was not present to hear any of it. Her apology for her absence, attributed to “many commitments”, was tabled and accepted by the gathered officials. The woman at the centre of the storm was nowhere to be found as her organisation’s future was being mapped out around her.
ANCWL secretary general Nokuthula Nqaba acknowledged the league’s subordinate position within the broader ANC structure, even while asserting its autonomy. “Whilst we are autonomous as the league, we are at the very same time an integral part of the ANC,” she said. It was the Women’s League, Nqaba revealed, that had chosen to stand back and allow the ANC’s Integrity Commission process to run its course rather than act unilaterally against its own president.
“Our argument was we are not dealing with the president per se, we are dealing with the member of the organisation,” she explained. “And our understanding is that before you become a member of the ANC Women’s League, you must be a member of the ANC in good standing.”
That deference to the mother body has now produced a moment of reckoning. The ANC has made its decision. The ANCWL accepted the briefing unanimously. But what comes next is theirs to determine, and the options are not comfortable ones.
Tolashe could voluntarily step aside pending the disciplinary committee’s outcome, as police minister Senzo Mchunu did during the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry.
The ANCWL NEC could take its own formal decision to that effect. Or the league could wait and watch as the disciplinary clock runs down.
Should Tolashe ultimately vacate the presidency, the constitutional consequences are significant. A special elective conference would be required to choose a new president, a prospect complicated by an ANC NEC moratorium on league conferences ahead of the 4 November local government elections.
Mbalula was frank about the limits of his mandate. “I don’t have a decision that I can communicate to the Women’s League that your president is suspended. I don’t have that issue as the secretary general of the ANC.”
What he did have, and what he delivered in full, was the ANC’s decision. The Women’s League’s officials filed back into their meeting to decide what to do with it.