ANC in EC admits testing times ahead
WHILE the Eastern Cape ANC has conceded 2016 was “quite a difficult year” after the party lost power in some influential municipalities countrywide, the leadership believes 2017 will also be a challenging year as they prepare for their national elective conference next December.
Speaking to the Saturday Dispatch yesterday about the year that was, for the ruling party and provincial government, provincial secretary Oscar Mabuyane said 2016 had been a difficult year.
“We must admit, if you look at how we performed during recent local government elections.
“Even though it has been a trend that in local government space we always decline in every election, this past one became a shocker to most of us because of how we lost some of the influential councils countrywide,” said Mabuyane.
In the province, ANC lost one of its two metropolitan municipalities, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, to the DA.
Mabuyane said, based on the party’s “postmortem research” after the elections, they identified that “there are spaces where we should have worked better on how to improve as an organisation, but we did not”.
He said ANC continued to experience challenges as a leader of society.
“We just need to find a way of dealing with our intra-organisational dynamics in a manner that seeks to unite our people as that is our fundamental goal,” he said.
He said 2017 “will be another challenging year” for the ANC as it prepares for its December conference where president Jacob Zuma’s successor will be elected.
“As the province we have built a legacy of trying to unite the ANC, because the more the province is united, the more the ANC leadership will be able to lead without being preoccupied by internal organisational squabbles.”
He said the time of instability in the ANC when the party prepares for conferences has come and gone. “Yes we agree there are anarchists who will permanently work towards ensuring the ANC remains trapped in factionalism and slate politics, because they know they can only survive if there are such challenges within.
“So our attitude should be to ensure that we unite ourselves as the ANC and focus on pushing major development projects as the provincial government,” he said. — asandan@dispatch.co.za