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COPING with facebook (January 2011)

The social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter have taken the world by storm.  This has been helped by the fact that many cellular telephones can be used to access them and thus you do not really need a computer.

I am on facebook but not yet on Twitter and it has allowed me to reconnect with many people I got acquainted to in the journey of my life.  I also get to read good articles that some of my facebook friends post like those of Drakenstein Municipal Manager Dr. Sidima Khabanyana.  I also use facebook to debate a lot of issues that would have not found space in other forums.  Given what is happening with the Congress of the People (COPE) today, the fact that it looks dead and buried with two Presidents fighting over what looks like carcass, I would like to trace my Facebook analysis and debate about COPE from a while back.  

Just a day after the 2009 national elections, as the results were streaming through, I wrote on Facebook that “COPE will be marginalized if it does not become the official opposition and it will die if it get less than ten percent in these elections”.

This sparked a lot of debate and a COPE member from Gauteng accused me of being harsh on the organization.  To which I responded that:

“This is not about COPE but about factors that will make them grow or condemn them.   An indication of that would have been a decent showing in this short space of time.  Going towards the next elections they will have lost the support of many who are angry because of the ill-treatment of TM and those who supported him around Polokoane. The JZ factor will also not be important factor in 2014.  COPE will have to deal with the reality of setting up and sustaining structures.  Ask the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and the Independent Democrats (ID) and they will tell you that is not easy.  COPE also still have to decide on policies and this has the potential of dividing a political party.  Some of COPE’s leaders have survived through salaries of being politicians (in national, provincial and local government level) and loosing these positions will create tensions and fierce contestation within the Party. I sympathise with them”

A COPE activist and a youth leader from Mbekweni responded that COPE will leave forever regardless of how it performs in those elections.  He insisted that the votes they got were because of hard work and they were going to work harder now that the elections were done.  It is interesting to note that it was to be about eighteen months later on facebook inbox that this guy told me of his intentions to leave COPE.

On April 24 2009 I posted as a status that “We must admit that COPE was a brave effort” and I meant it. 
It was also on Facebook that I was forced to confront a reality that I did not want to deal with in as far as COPE is concerned.  Former COPE Spokesperson JJ Tabane who is also a facebook friend of mine posted comments and articles that were highly critical of COPE before he resigned his membership of the organization.  In one of the Facebook exchanges on Tabane’s wall he admitted that the idea of COPE emerged as the direct consequence of the Polokoane defeat of former President Mbeki.  This shocked me, as I have always believed and argued, even in this column, that it must have been after the later ill-treatment of those who supported  Mbeki (Ja, I believe that Mbeki got a raw deal).  So Tabane left COPE and insinuated on Facebook that he could rejoin the ANC a week before the Mail and Guardian speculated on this.

Another interesting COPE character on facebook is the Member of Parliament and youth leaders Anele Mda, whom I met when she was involved in a minor car accident.  Miss Mda provides interesting insights into what is going on in COPE in her own highly factional way.  She sharply cuts people down when disagreements are raised and I can’t help to see her as a female version of Julius Malema. 

So who said facebook can not be used for research into COPE or other topic?

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