Johannesburg - Warring Cope factions traded blows on Wednesday at a press conference over back and forth suspensions of some of the troubled party’s leaders.
Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota was suspended with immediate effect on Monday by his deputy Willie Madisha.
Lekota and Madisha are the party’s sole members of Parliament.
Madisha, national spokesperson Dennis Bloem and secretary for elections Mzwandile Hleko were also later suspended by Lekota and national chairperson Teboho Loate.
At a media briefing called to announce and give reasons for the suspensions of Madisha, Bloem and Hleko on Wednesday, party members including one who is part of the Gauteng provincial committee stormed the venue in Boksburg.
“There is no media briefing here, there is no Cope here.
“There is no Cope that is going to sit here with a parallel (structure).
“We don’t want what you’re doing.
“We know what is happening, you want to divide us,” screamed the man.
He also confronted Lekota who screamed: “I don't want this boy to come here.”
Other Cope leaders and members punched the man, tried to hit him with a chair and kicked him.
Lekota later claimed he did not know who these people were.
He accused his opponents in the party of spreading rumours that he was about to die.
However, Lekota did reveal that he was unwell.
“Maybe I must take you into confidence and share that I had an attack of prostate cancer.
“If I look a little bit on the smaller size than what you are used to it’s simply because in the course of trying to recover from the operation, I lost quite a bit of weight,” he said.
According to Lekota, the opposing faction refused to attend the meeting to which he invited them to elect interim secretary-general and deputy secretary-general.
He said when Madisha announced his suspension earlier in the week, the party's congress national committee had already suspended him, Bloem and Hleko.
Cope served them with letters of suspension on Thursday, August 26, before Madisha announced Lekota's counter suspension on Monday.
Outside the venue, acting Gauteng provincial secretary Mxolisi Ntombela accused Lekota of going around setting up parallel structures.
“We are here to say that these factionalists that have been called here are not the real members of Cope, these are mafias, these are the people destroying Cope,” he said.
Ntombela said Lekota had no right to address the media briefing because he had been suspended .
Takalani Raidani, who claimed to be the leader of the Cope Youth Movement, asked how Lekota’s faction could address the media without the structure.