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CHAPTER 4
However, with the election on 31 January 1977 things started to go wrong. The result
was that 190 of the delegates were representatives of SAMPI, and only 150 were
from SAMSO, which meant that SAMPI would have the majority vote in Congress.
ACTION COMMITTEE
The action committee consisted of the management committee members of
SAMPI and the management committee of SAMSO, namely:
SAMPI
: Fanie Ferreira, Hennie de Jager, Hannes de Kock and Crawford
von Abo.
SAMSO
: Ben Wilkens, Thys van der Hoven, Faan Basson, Andries Beyers and
Japie van Eeden.
Wilkens was appointed as Chairperson and Ferreira as Vice-chairperson of
the action committee, with Mr Danie Venter, SAMPI’s Director at that stage, as
the Secretary.
While SAMPI tried everything to get the Congress to take place, Mr Danie Ven-
ter, director of SAMPI, and the other staff members of SAMPI joined the ranks
of SAMSO. This was clearly part of SAMSO’s strategy, because Venter had
first-hand knowledge of SAMPI’s strategy, strengths, weaknesses, et cetera.
due to his position at SAMPI, and he even handed SAMPI’s membership list
to SAMSO’s leaders. Venter actively started to harm SAMPI in various ways.
SAMPI was forced to get a court order to eject Venter from his office, as he
obstinately refused to leave. The court order was obtained, but Venter took
SAMPI’s membership list and the circulation list for SAMPI’s magazine with
him and left SAMPI without the information. According to Mr Crawford von
Abo, after this conflict SAMPI had only two staff members to provide admin-
istrative support.
Video: SAMPI launches its own magazine as
mouthpiece of the organisation.
