Today marks the deadline for the new Congress of the People (Cope) to respond in writing to the ANC's legal demands that the new organization change its name. The ANC's attempts to force a name change from Core strikes me as a petty and frivolous nuisance. It would be hard for the ANC to claim that it has all proprietary political claims to the word “Congress,” given the presence of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) both historically and in its greatly diminished current manifestation.
It strikes me that right now the ANC has far more important matters to attend to, what with the very existence of the breakaway party embodying the severe schisms within the ruling party and the fact that ANC leaders, including Jacob Zuma, continue to eat their own. The latest example of this trend is the fact that Jacob Zuma quite transparently sees the presidency as rightly his, not Kgalema Mothlante's, justifying the recent Democratic Alliance jibe that Mothlante is but a “seat-warmer” for Zuma.
