The Herald (South Africa)

Proposal for direct voting by members for party president

- Zingisa Mvumvu

A RADICAL proposal for all ANC members to vote directly for the party president was raised by the ANC Eastern Cape provincial consultive conference in East London yesterday.

The proposal will now be among the central discussion points to be taken to the party’s provincial policy conference in Mthatha this weekend.

The proposal first came to light on Friday when provincial secretary Oscar Mabuyane raised it at the Solomon Mahlangu Memorial Lecture in Duncan Village.

Instead of the current system where about 5 000 delegates elect national party leaders, Mabuyane said the party’s one million members should be allowed to vote for who gets to lead them.

This, according to him, will ultimately kill slate politics and patronage in the governing party.

Should the ANC in the province make this an official resolution, then the party in the Eastern Cape will be heading to the national policy conference late this month in Johannesbu­rg armed with what could set the ANC on a new trajectory – should they manage to convince other provinces.

“I have a strong belief that to fight factionali­sm, careerism and manipulati­on of membership in the ANC, in the policy conference we must engage other provinces that all audited ANC members be allowed to go to the polling station (set up in all party branches) to vote for who becomes a leader of the ANC,” Mabuyane said on Friday.

Yesterday, he said: “If you open the election process to all members in good standing it is going to help us deal with some of the malaise that the ANC is currently suffering from, like manipulati­ng of membership and buying of votes by factions.

“Also, it will make leadership know that it is accountabl­e to the masses and by that we do not mean conference delegates or branch executive committees, but we talk about the membership as a whole in the ANC.”

This proposal was among others that took centre stage at the two-day gathering at the East London City Hall. They are set to be further discussed this weekend at the provincial general council.

Among other things highlighte­d at the consultati­ve conference yesterday were poor cadre quality and cadre deployment, moral decay, factionali­sm, corruption, the bloated size of the ANC NEC and state capture.

Reporting back yesterday, one of the commission chairmen, and also a PEC member, Gregory Brown, said their commission resolved to propose cuts to the party’s highest decision-making structure.

Brown said the proposal was that the NEC currently made up of 86 members plus 18 ex-officio members giving a total of 104 should be cut to 66 or even 30.

He said their commission believed that the ANC NEC in its current form was bloated and needed to be reduced to be more effective.

The commission also suggested there was a need to review ANC cadre deployment policy which, among other things, they accused of being unreasonab­le in its current form.

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