Zuma appeals to candidates
SHOW OF UNITY: INFIGHTING COULD CAUSE COLLAPSE OF ELECTIVE CONFERENCE
Urges them to focus on problems of economic liberation and not personal attacks.
President Jacob Zuma has to calm tempers among the ANC presidential candidates to save the ANC’s December elective conference from collapsing due to in-fighting.
And his meeting with the candidates on Thursday night was a clear attempt to mend bridges and achieve unity ahead of the conference.
Political analyst Professor Steven Friedman said the ANC probably had to forge unity before the conference. “If the conference fails, the party leadership would stay on beyond their term of office. The ANC constitution says the national executive committee, which includes the top six, is in office for five years and the five years ends next month,” he said.
Another analyst Professor Sipho Seepe said by holding discussions with the seven presidential hopefuls, Zuma was showing he had learned that party unity was significant and he was laying the foundation for it.
On Thursday evening, Zuma invited the seven ANC candidates to a dinner in Pretoria and it’s understood that he prevailed on them to show a united front and not to attack each other.
Seepe said the president’s concern was that the contest has become more personal than political.
“Some of the candidates’ campaigns have centred on the person of the president rather than on what it will take to solve the country’s challenges,” Seepe said.
Ramaphosa has vowed to lock up those involved in state corruption. particularly state capture, a reference to Zuma and the Gupta family. Sisulu and another anti-Zuma candidate, Mathews Phosa, openly called for the president to step down.
Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma have been avoiding directly attacking each other but they despise each other’s approach to economic transformation. Seepe said Zuma’s intervention was necessary: “He was displaying remarkable maturity in engaging his detractors,” he added.
He reminded the candidates of the reason for the ANC’s existence and that its mission, which is still relevant, requires they remember they are comrades and focus on economic liberation.