Mantashe warns ANC against ‘buying votes’
ANC general secretary Gwede Mantashe has spoken out against the party’s leaders who buy votes to get into leadership positions. He has warned that the organisation faces losing power in 2019, if it does not change its ways.
Speaking at a May Day rally outside the Johannesburg Stock Exchange yesterday, Mantashe said because of vote buying the party ends up with “accidental leadership”.
“When you combine factionalism and corruption, you will have what I call accidental leadership succession. You find that people who become leaders are those who have access to money and go around with money and distribute. They get voted into power and after that we all ask ourselves ‘by the way who is this?’”
Mantashe also called for unity in the tripartite alliance.
“We are going through a difficult period. Factions are very strong and undermine theANC. Cosatu commits a mistake of thinking that problems in the ANC are problems of the ANC. Problems in the ANC are problems of the alliance. We cannot be strong by destroying each other or undermining each other. I can assure you, if the ANC is weak, Cosatu is going to be weak. Cosatu must wake up.”
He said the December elective conference should elect a leader that will unite the party. “If we come up with a leadership (in December) that says to society that looting will continue in the new leadership that we elect, I can tell you that we can kiss 2019 goodbye.
“Now it is in your interest for us not to kiss 2019 goodbye; it is in your interest that you work hard enough that the ANC rediscovers itself. Today the biggest problem is looting, corruption, factionalism and nepotism. We must come with solutions for those problems today,”Mantashe said.
He said: “What we bring today is a message of unity. Unity of the alliance, unity of the ANC. When the alliance is united, it makes things happen. When the alliance is divided and fighting among itself, it destroys the gains it has made. It was a united alliance that changed the labour outlook of this country in terms of laws that were passed. We fought side by side, shoulder to shoulder.”
He said alliance members should raise their concerns with the ANC and not through the media.
“The ANC listens if you talk to it, the ANC doesn’t listen if you shout at it – there is a big difference. If you stand at a distance and shout at it, the ANC doesn’t listen. If you go to the structures and get the resolutions that its president must step down, and if we only hear it in the media then you are not talking to the ANC,” Mantashe said.
Speaking at the same event, Cosatu general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali reiterated the federation’s stance that it wants Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to take over from Jacob Zuma at the end of the year.