Expelled ANC member Carl Niehaus will launch his Radical Economic Transformation (RET) Movement — which might eventually become a political party and contest elections — by the end of the month.
The movement is being registered as a nonprofit organisation by Niehaus’s legal team but he said in a Twitter space hosted to discuss the developments that becoming a fully-fledged political party was one of several “possibilities” that lay ahead.
Niehaus hopes to set up an alliance with “parties of the left” and bring onboard members of the ANC who are disgruntled with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership to build a mass movement pushing for economic transformation.
Niehaus, a former political prisoner and spokesperson for the disbanded Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association, was kicked out of the ANC late last year for bringing the party into disrepute.
Niehaus, who has been dogged by a series of financial scandals over the years, appealed the expulsion and then resigned from the governing party, whose recent elective conference he was not allowed to attend.
On Monday night Niehaus said the RET Movement would be registered as a nonprofit by 12 January and a steering committee of three to five people would be appointed and introduced to the public at a media briefing next week.
The movement would raise money through crowdfunding and subscriptions and would not seek funding from big corporations, he added.
“Apart from crowdfunding, we will be hoping to be able to get funding from all and various sectors of progressive society. Our intention is not to become beholden to large monopoly capital funding,” Niehaus said.
“Provisions will be put in place to avoid any corruption or misappropriation of funds, which would be audited in an open and transparent fashion.”
Niehas said the movement would not focus on the failings of the ANC but would develop its own 10-point programme of “immediate work” it intended to do.
He said he had held discussions with “parties on the left” and was “confident” that the RET Movement would be able to work with them to develop common programmes of action.
The RET Movement would become “a major player on the South African political landscape”.
“For now, it will be a nonprofit movement and an NPO. How it develops along the way, whether it becomes a political party or not, are possibilities that lie in the future. I don’t want to speculate at this point,” Niehaus said. “The kind of role is what we need to talk about.
“We are not going to let the grass grow under our feet. Within the next two weeks the RET Movement will be fully established, rolled out, getting membership and starting to do its work.”
Although about 10 500 people participated in Niehus’s virtual session, whether his movement gains traction on the ground remains to be seen.
One of his most vocal supporters is ANC eThekwini member and businessperson Nkosentsha Shezi, a leading voice in the RET faction in the party in Durban, who has called on people to support the Niehaus movement.
ANC KwaZulu-Natal spokesperson Mafika Mndebele said that the party would “definitely not” allow its members to participate in Niehaus’s organisation.
“ANC members in KwaZulu-Natal remain ANC members and have subjected themselves to the current leadership of the ANC. As members of the ANC we have embraced our party and see nothing wrong with the ANC,” Mndebele said.
The province would “rally behind the current leadership and eradicate any attempt that seeks to divide the ANC”, he said.
