‘Monsters have crept into the ruling party’
ANC leaders at the party’s United Democratic Front (UDF) commemoration at the weekend confessed to activists and members that “monst had crept into the ruling party with “foreign appetites” to enrich themselves in government.
The event‚ the 33rd annual commemoration of one of the leading anti-apartheid organisations of the 1980s‚ took place in Trafalgar High School in Cape Town on Saturday.
The UDF civic movement was launched in Mitchells Plain in 1983.
Speakers included ANC heavyweight Ebrahim Rasool‚ UDF veteran Cheryl Carolus and ANC national chairwoman Baleka Mbete.
It coincided with an ANC national executive committee meeting with its Western Cape provincial leadership to discuss organisational renewal after losses in the August local government elections.
Cape Town was the only metro ruled by the opposition before the election.
Carolus told those in attendance that while the ANC had improved the lives of the majority of South Africans‚ the party had to accept that South Africans voiced their dissatisfaction with the party by either abstaining or shifting their allegiance elsewhere.
“We have lost significant support among people who have worn the ANC T-shirt with pride. These are people who wore the ANC T-shirt before it guaranteed you a job or a tender, but when wearing it was an invitation [until] death‚” Carolus said.
She urged former UDF activists to get behind the ANC in the Western Cape to form a formidable opposition to the DA‚ which delivered services to “privileged communities at the expense of the poor masses”.
She said the ANC needed to return to the people with a humble resolve to serve them.
“When the UDF was launched we did not spend more than R6 000 on it. You know why? Because we didn’t stay in hotels. We stayed in the homes of our members.
“It seems like a small thing but it speaks to the monsters that have crept into the soul of our movement‚” she said. — BDlive