ANC leaders prep for election
The build-up to the ANC’s 54th national conference kicks off in earnest this week, beginning with a meeting of the party’s national executive committee to iron out final preparations for the elective gathering, which will start on December 16.
With Parliament now in recess, all eyes turn to Luthuli House and Nasrec, where the gathering will be held.
The national executive committee meeting takes place after a flurry of provincial general councils, at which seven provinces announced the preferences for leadership of the majority of their branches.
The last two provinces, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, will hold their general councils on Monday and Tuesday.
KwaZulu-Natal is the largest province and is set to pronounce on MP Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as its preferred president. However, delegates from the province who will attend the December conference and back Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa are expected to boycott the provincial council in Durban.
A close watch will be kept on the judgment in an appeal lodged by the KwaZulu-Natal executive committee, which was declared illegal by the court in September. The appeal by the leadership structure, which is aligned to DlaminiZuma, was heard last week and judgment was reserved.
Limpopo will hold its provincial general council on Monday in Polokwane. It is widely expected to come out in support of Ramaphosa.
The ANC’s national executive committee meeting is expected to receive a reportback from the task team that went to the Eastern Cape to look into an appeal over the outcome of the province’s elective conference, which was held in September. President Jacob Zuma and his allies have been pushing for the new Eastern Cape leadership, which is aligned to Ramaphosa, to be dissolved and for a task team to be set up to run the province.
The national executive committee will also sign off on reports expected to be tabled at the elective conference.
The ANC’s economic transformation subcommittee will interact with the media on Monday on the policy proposals set to be discussed and decided on at the conference in December. Critical issues that have already emerged are the nationalisation of the South African Reserve Bank and the expropriation of land without compensation.
The Ntsebeza inquiry, launched by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, will on Monday brief the media on its role in investigating employees at KPMG for their individual role in allegations of state capture, linked to their work on the Guptas’ accounts and at the South African Revenue Service.
The hearings into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of more than 100 psychiatric patients moved from Life Esidimeni by the Gauteng health department will continue throughout the coming week.