Free State Capture And The ‘Cattle Thief'

An extract from Gangster State: Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture by Pieter-Louis Myburgh

Come 1999 ace magashule must have felt sure that the time had finally come for him to be appointed Free State premier. After all, he was the ruling party’s chairperson in the Free State and the ANC had been very clear that it desired one person to lead both both the provincial party and the government.

But Thabo Mbeki, who took over from Mandela as ANC president in 1997, and as the man in charge of the country after the 1999 elections, clearly shared Mandela’s reservations about Ace: he shocked the latter’s support base by appointing Botshabelo local and NCOP member Winkie Direko as Free State premier.

Like Terror Lekota and MatsepeCasaburri before her, Direko was labelled by the Magashule camp as an outsider imposed on the Free State.

But Direko was tough, and it quickly became clear that she would not be intimidated.

By mid-2000 the ongoing factional conflict necessitated yet another drastic intervention by the ANC’s national leadership. The Magashule-led Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) of the ANC was disbanded and an interim committee was appointed to lead the party in the province. The body was led by Godfrey Mosala, a former official in the education department, and Noby Ngobane, who was later shot dead in what is deemed to have been the most high profile assassination as a result of the province’s political discord.

The opportunity for Magashule to once again grab the ANC’s top position in the province presented itself in 2002 when another elective provincial conference was to be held. Mbeki favoured Direko for chair, but Magashule comfortably defeated her by 100 votes, marking the start of a 15-year run of nearly uninterrupted rule as chairperson of the ANC in the Free State.