COPE President Mosioua Lekota will have to explain to his executive why he held a media briefing on Monday with the civil rights organisation, Afriforum, without their knowledge.
In a joint statement, Lekota and Afriforum called on South Africans to join forces to oppose efforts to amend the Constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation.
"Mosiuoa Lekota, President of the South African opposition party COPE, and Kallie Kriel, CEO of the civil rights organisation AfriForum, will visit foreign embassies in South Africa together to request that the international community apply pressure on the South African government and the ruling ANC to honour the South African Constitution, property rights and the 1994 settlement and that the ANC accepts that they don't have a legitimate mandate from South African voters via an election to amend the Constitution," the joint statement said.
"COPE and AfriForum view their cooperation to protect property rights as a positive example of how citizens from different backgrounds and who may sometimes have different viewpoints can, in fact, cooperate successfully through mutual recognition and respect and by focusing on matters of a shared interest".
But, COPE General Secretary, Lyndall Shoppe-Mafole, told Algoa FM News that neither she nor several other party executive committee members were aware of the briefing.
"First of all, I, as General Secretary of the party was unaware of that press conference and I still have to get a briefing from the President about it. I've talked to some members of the Congress of the People's executive committee and they were also unaware," she said.
Shoppe-Mafole added that Lekota was the kind of leader who is always "trying to talk to other people and so on and so forth, who are not necessarily in the fold if I can put it that way" which is something that she said she welcomed.
"However, I believe as General Secretary of the party that when you are going to have such a press conference it is something that needs to be a decision of the party. I'm not aware of any decision or discussion of the party on this press conference," she said.
Shoppe-Mafole said they were now waiting on Lekota to explain to the COPE executive about it.
