Eastern Cape ANC wants to roll 2019 vote back to 1994
THE ANC in the Eastern Cape is going all out to ensure that 2019 sees a return to the election results of 1994 – an 84% victory.
More than 2.4 million people in the Eastern Cape voted for the ruling party in the country’s first democratic elections.
Since then, internal problems have given birth to three major breakaway parties nationally, while its support base in the province dropped to 70% (1 528 345 votes) during the 2014 elections.
The ANC provincial executive committee yesterday wrapped up its two-day election workshop at the Osner Hotel in East London, where a plan for achieving this target was crafted.
Invited to the event were party leaders from branch level up.
Speaking to the Daily Dispatch on the sidelines of the workshop, ANC provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi said the party would head to next year’s general and provincial elections in a much better position than the previous election, as it was busy dealing with its internal problems.
“The ANC is doing the right thing and confronting its own intra-party challenges as well as its intra-strife. This is enabling us to be capable of dealing with any challenges because as we deal with those challenges we become united,” he said.
“People are regaining their trust in their ANC under the stewardship of President Cyril Ramaphosa,” he added.
“We are going to deal with all the internal problems, in particular at local and provincial level, so that we can be bold to deal with any questions that the electorate, as we campaign towards the election, put to us.”
This was said while Keiskamahoek residents were out on the streets yesterday burning tyres over service delivery-related demands. Among them is the rural town’s bad road network.
Ngcukayitobi conceded there had been delays in delivering services such as access to clean water, electricity and proper roads infrastructure in some areas, including the eastern part of the province.
“But that does not suggest we have not improved the lives of ordinary people. We have good stories to tell about stability created in Magwa and Majola tea estates and the progress on the Wild Coast road development. But we need to do more,” he said.
The party’s failure to deliver services in areas like Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and divisions within the party cost it dearly during local government elections in 2016 as a DA-led coalition government wrested power from them. Ngcukayitobi said the party had since regained considerable lost ground in the Bay, saying “we are certain we will win the election in Nelson Mandela come 2019”.
Asked whether the target set by the late ANC stalwart Winnie MadikizelaMandela of achieving a two-thirds majority was possible in the next elections, Ngcukayitobi said: “We are not going to be talking about thirds.
“What we want as the ANC in the Eastern Cape is to achieve the ambitious 1994 election victory.”
By late yesterday, the hundreds of those in attendance were still busy engaging with the reports of commissions covering the areas of focus identified for the party going to next year’s elections. —