Gwede: If I go, we all go

MANTASHE GIVES STRONG HINT OF AN EARLY ANC ELECTIVE CONFERENCE HE SAYS IT’S NOT FAR-FETCHED FOR PARTY LEADERS TO RESIGN DUE TO BAD RESULTS

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe gave the strongest indication yesterday that the party could possibly hold an early elective conference.

However, Mantashe said if he had to resign because of the ANC’s poor performance during the recent local government elections, then the entire leadership should do the same.

“I can tell you that if you say that because of these results I must resign, I will go to Zizi (Kodwa) and say, why are you remaining behind because we’re in the same collective, we work together,” he said.

He argued that the ANC national executive committee took a decision that they should take collective responsibility for the party’s electoral decline.

He said if one leader resigns, then the collective should.

“If we take collective responsibility, our conscience must allow us to accept that if need be we must resign in numbers. That is what collective means ... If we made blunders we did them together.”

Mantashe said it was not a “farfetched” idea that leaders resign because of bad results.

“Leadership means taking responsibility and being accountable. If the constituency says pack your bags, pack it, simple.”

Mantashe said the leadership collectively had to have a serious debate about what happened when they led an organisation, which then declined in support.

He said holding an early elective conference was “not a bad idea” as long as the party did not rip itself apart in the process.

“We can’t go to a conference because we have done badly ... and we go fight it out there, smash each other at conference, blood on the floor and we come out that conference more divided,” Mantashe told journalists in Johannesburg.

He said a factionalism approach to the conference would not resolve anything.

The ANC Youth League last week said it believed an early conference should be held, and that there be no contestation during the election of a new ANC leadership.

Mantashe said the call for an early conference was being discussed in a number of the ANC’s structures.

He said history had habit of repeating itself and if the ANC did not unite it would lose power.

“When you are under siege and your back is against the wall, the worst thing you can do is finger pointing and to continue hurting each other by attacking each other.”

Where the party has lost power, Mantashe said the ANC would be an effective opposition.

“If constituency says pack your bags, pack it