Bennet Joko

Last updated
Bennet Joko
Member of the National Assembly
In office
23 June 2021 –31 August 2021
Personal details
Citizenship South Africa
Political party Pan Africanist Congress of Azania

Bennet Joko is a South African politician who was briefly a Member of 27th South African Parliament from June to August 2021. He is the Deputy President of the Moloto faction of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). [1] His installation in, and removal from, the PAC's parliamentary seat was part of a factional struggle with Mzwanele Nyhontso's side of the party. [2]

Contents

Political career

Joko formerly represented the PAC in the City of Cape Town council [3] and was the PAC's provincial leader in the Western Cape. [4] He was deputy secretary general of the PAC in 2014. [5]

In the 2019 general election, Joko was ranked second on the PAC's national party list, [6] but the party won only one seat in the National Assembly, meaning that Joko narrowly failed to gain election. [7] During subsequent months, Joko was closely involved in factionalism which split the PAC: he was aligned to the faction which claimed Narius Moloto as PAC president, and, in August 2019, he was elected as Moloto's deputy. [8] A rival faction, led by Mzwanele Nyhontso, argued that Moloto and Joko were not the PAC's legitimate leaders. [7] Nyhontso was PAC's sole representative in Parliament, and Moloto announced as early as August 2019 that his faction intended to remove Nyhontso from the PAC's seat and replace him with Joko. [7]

Following a prolonged political and legal battle, [9] Joko was sworn in to Parliament on 23 June 2021: Nyhontso lost his seat after ostensibly being expelled from the PAC. [10] However, in August 2021, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that Nyhontso was the lawful leader of the PAC, entailing that Moloto's faction had not had proper standing to expel him. [11] Nyhontso reclaimed the PAC's parliamentary seat on 31 August. [10]

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References

  1. ↑ "Current Leadership". Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. Retrieved 2023-01-09.
  2. ↑ de Lange, Ilsa (13 Sep 2018). "PAC gets court order to remove its sole MP from parliament".
  3. ↑ van der Westhuizen, Theuns (16 March 2006). "Helen Zille: Whodunnit?". News24. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
  4. ↑ "Scorpions hearings marred by heckling". IOL. 19 August 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  5. ↑ "PAC claims irregularities in voting results". Eyewitness News. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  6. ↑ "Bennet Joko". People's Assembly. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
  7. 1 2 3 "Narius Moloto plans to remove newly-elected PAC president from Parly". IOL. 1 September 2019. Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  8. ↑ "Moloto re-elected PAC president". SABC News. 2019-08-24. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
  9. ↑ "PAC faction drags Speaker into party's leadership battle". Sowetan. 17 June 2021. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
  10. 1 2 "List of members (alphabetical): 6th Parliament" (PDF). Parliamentary Monitoring Group. 9 March 2023. Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  11. ↑ Naki, Eric (2021-08-23). "Mzwanele Nyhontso declared PAC's lawful leader". The Citizen. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
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