Gangster State

the Mbeki-led national leadership called him up to help lead the party
in the Free State. Ngombane was first and foremost a South African
Communist Party (SACP) man, and as such was on the sidelines when
it came to the ANC’s internal politics.
But his relative detachment from the factional battles probably made
him the ideal candidate for the role. Nokwanda said the national
leadership viewed her husband as politically neutral, but the
Magashule faction was not convinced. ‘Noby tried to make the two
warring groups reconcile, that is where the hatred [towards him]
started,’ maintained Nokwanda. She said it was not in the northern
camp’s best interest to have peace in the province, at least not on any
terms set by ‘outsiders’ who had been ‘imposed’ on the province by
Mbeki and co.
The ILC was mandated with two main tasks: firstly, to ensure that the
ANC’s branches in the province functioned optimally; thereafter, to
organise and oversee a credible provincial elective conference free of
allegations and accusations of vote-rigging and other irregularities. As
coordinator of the interim structure, Ngombane quickly made some
powerful enemies in the Free State, especially among people aligned to
Magashule.
In 2001 , while Magashule was still serving as an MP in Cape Town,
Direko reshuffled the province’s executive council and in the process
got rid of three MECs who hailed from the north. She replaced them
with people from the province’s southern region, which obviously
angered the Magashule camp. They directed their fury at Ngombane’s
ILC, which in their view had influenced Direko’s decisions.^1
They saw the reshuffle as a move designed to ‘purge’ the provincial
cabinet ‘of supporters of ANC provincial chairperson Ace Magashule’,