Not Coping: Party's manifesto launch disaster

THE Congress of the People (Cope) said it had to postpone the launch of its manifesto that was scheduled to take place on Saturday, 23 March, to avoid a disaster.

This after the party cited reasons relating to space as one of the concerns.

The launch was supposed to be held at Suurman Community Hall in Hammanskraal, Tshwane, but it was indicated that the centre could only accommodate 2 000 people.

Speaking to Daily Sun, the leader of Cope Mosiuoa Lekota said they were attracted to the idea of Hammanskraal because the people from this area supported the party.

He further said residents from Hammanskraal were among the deprived communities in Gauteng.

“There's no water here. People are dying of cholera, if you look around you will see the bad state of affairs. This structure that we are standing next to is one of the most ideal successes under apartheid, but it can only accommodate not more than 2 000 people. We were expecting a bigger number as other provinces were planning to come here. We felt when we got here that this place was not suitable for us to hold a gathering of so many people coming from outside this area,” Lekota said.

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He said it was going to be a terrible disaster to have so many people coming from various provinces and find that there were no facilities appropriate to host such a gathering.

"The numbers were increasing, and we realised that this can’t be as there were additional people coming. There's also a question of food to feed the people. Where you have no facilities, it was not going to be the right place to host our event,” he said.

Acting national treasurer, Tebogo Loate, said they had to take an urgent decision to postpone the launch by two weeks.

He said on 6 April, they'd come back to the same area to launch the manifesto.

“Most people who were not counted and prepared for were planning to come and were working on the number of only 2 000. We couldn’t take the risk. We needed to rearrange our plans and plan for what we didn’t anticipate,” he said.