Divided ANC faces election defeat: Cyril ‘Millions’ down drain in health department
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that the ANC risked losing next year’s general elections if the governing party remained riddled with divisions.
Addressing hundreds of delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) national congress in Ekurhuleni yesterday, he said infighting had to come to an end.
“It (infighting) must end because we have a huge task of the 2019 elections,” he said.
Ramaphosa said unity in the governing party was imperative and that ANC structures had to stop colliding with each other. “We must be united if we want to win the 2019 elections,” he said.
His plea came a few hours after disgruntled ANC members in Limpopo filed an urgent application to interdict the provincial conference scheduled this weekend.
Three ANC members in the Peter Mokaba region, Molema Nong, Perkane Mamabolo and Mamotane Mangwale, want the provincial executive committee (PEC) chaired by Premier Stan Mathabatha to be interdicted and prohibited from commencing, participating, continuing, conducting elections, passing resolutions or taking any other action at the conference.
They want the court to declare all decisions already taken by the conference declared null and void.
The party’s national executive committee (NEC) acknowledged the work done by the provincial dispute resolution committee and NEC deployees to resolve complaints and disputes with affected structures and ANC members in Limpopo.
The NEC urged that these processes be concluded and decisions communicated to structures before the provincial conference sat.
This week, the ANC endorsed the election of its Free State PEC despite threats of legal action by members unhappy with the election of Sam Mashinini to replace ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, who vacated the position in December.
The NEC was optimistic that the challenges in Kwazulu-natal could be resolved and directed the national dispute-resolution committee to continue work with the provincial task team to address the issues raised by disgruntled members who interdicted the provincial conference earlier this month.
It expressed hope that resolving the KZN dispute would render the legal contestation redundant.
In Gauteng, the NEC expressed its happiness with its deployees in attending to disputes and complains and encouraged all party structures to subject themselves to internal processes in seeking solutions to disputes.
Regional conferences in Gauteng will be held next weekend and the provincial conference by the end of next month.
Disgruntled ANC members protested outside the venue of the special NEC meeting in Tshwane, forcing Magashule to leave the meeting and address them.
Ramaphosa also warned that unity in the ANC had to be based on principle and not convenience.
“We can’t have unity if wrong things continue to be done in the ANC,” he said.
Yesterday afternoon, NUM members started voting for new leaders and results were expected late last night. THE NATIONAL Treasury has confirmed in Parliament that some families of psychiatric patients who died in the Life Esidimeni tragedy have not been paid.
The Treasury also painted a picture of the poor state of finances in the Gauteng Health Department, with hundreds of millions of rand overspent and staff appointed without a budget.
But Gauteng Finance MEC Barbara Creecy told the select committee on finance in the National Council of Provinces yesterday that it was addressing problems at the department.
She said Premier David Makhura had appointed a task team in his cabinet to fix the department.
The Treasury’s Michael Rammabi told the select committee there were a number of concerns with the Gauteng Department of Health.
“It’s the Life Esidimeni issue, of which the families have not been paid,” he said.
The department, he said, had appointed more than 2 000 employees without a budget, but added that this number was declining.
“The staff head count is starting to stabilise and the numbers have been reduced by 1 300,” said Rammabi.
He also said there had been a decline in the number of medical specialists in Gauteng.
In education, R900 million had been overspent because more teachers were being employed.
Rammabi said the Gauteng Health Department had overspent by R2 billion and attributed this to instability.
“In the past seven years, the department has had five accounting officers, which creates instability,” he said.
Creecy said Makhura would announce the new head of the Health Department soon and this was in addition to the recent appointment of the chief financial officer.
Rammabi said irregular expenditure in the department was R9 billion, while medical claims that must be defended in court against the department stood at R22bn.