ANC may screen future leaders

THE ANC will conduct a skills audit and screen members who will take up crucial positions in the organisation to avoid having “factory faults” leading in its ranks.

This is one of the proposals that will be debated at the party’s national conference in June.

Newly appointed Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said yesterday that the ruling party was determined to root out rotten apples in its leadership structures such as the national executive committee (NEC).

Mbalula, ANC chairman of the sub-committee on organisational development, said there needed to be a difference between an NEC member and a branch member.

“It is assumed when you are elected in the NEC you are a leader with impeccable credentials… Leaders of the ANC at a macro political level in terms of the NEC are people who must provide and give direction to membership and society,” he said.

Mbalula was speaking at the party’s headquarters, Luthuli House, in Johannesburg, on the party discussion document on organisational renewal.

The aim of the discussion around the policy document, according to the party, is to provoke robust debates within ANC structures and its alliance partners.

Mbalula said cabinet ministers had expressed concerns about the state of disarray the ANC was in, saying they had the right to speak as long as they understood their responsibility in the organisation.

Part of the organisational renewal conversation, Mbalula said, was the ability of the ANC to reinvent itself. “We are an organisation that believes that we have not reached inertia in terms of ideas. We subscribe to the notion that organisations evolve… If organisations don’t renew themselves over time, they die.”