I refuse to be Cyril’s deputy – Gwede
Mantashe says ANC will not accept an all-male presidency and rejects offer on Ramaphosa’s slate
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has revealed for the first time that he turned down lobbyists who wanted him to stand as deputy president on presidential hopeful Cyril Ramaphosa’s slate.
Addressing hundreds of ANC members at KwaNomzamo community hall in Humansdorp in Eastern Cape, Mantashe said: “I told them that it is going to fail on two counts.
“Because the expectation for the ANC in 2017 is for Ramaphosa to have a female deputy president, the ANC won’t accept [an] all-male presidency.
“Secondly, Ramaphosa and I were together in NUM [National Union of Mineworkers]. You may think people don’t care about that but it will come out.”
He was delivering a memorial lecture in honour of the late ANC leader Oliver Tambo.
Mantashe said the upcoming ANC elective conference in December would be a difficult one because “everyone is raising [their] hands to lead the party”.
“There is a stampede of everyone raising their hands wanting to be the president, and that shows the death of self-control and discipline in the organisation.
“The last time the ANC had so many contestants for the position of the president was in 1952 when they were contesting [against] Chief Albert Luthuli. We cannot have the same thing in 2017,” he said.
Mantashe said he hoped that when nominations open on September 1, many of those who had raised their hands for the presidential position would step aside.
Turning to Eastern Cape politics, Mantashe said members were no longer attending all party activities, opting to rather attend just those organised by backers of either Phumulo Masualle or Oscar Mabuyane, who are set to go head to head at the ANC provincial conference that will be help in East London next weekend.
He singled out the absence from the memorial lecture of former provincial MEC for health, Sicelo Gqobana, who is also the ANC branch secretary for the Sarah Baartman region.
“It is common knowledge that Gqobana supports a third term for Masualle as provincial chairman.
“There is nothing wrong when you lobby for a different candidate but everything is wrong when you can no longer attend party activities and you attend meetings based on whose faction organises it,” Mantashe said.