Renew or suffer at the polls, ANC Gauteng chair warns party
Newly elected ANC Gauteng chair Panyaza Lesufi has echoed senior party officials saying the governing party needs to focus on ramping up service delivery or risk losing the national election in 2024.
Addressing the media in Johannesburg on Monday, after a hotly contested election at the provincial conference in Benoni at the weekend, Lesufi said: “The ANC is not dead, but if we can’t do anything to challenge the wrong things happening in the ANC, it is inevitable that we will have challenges.”
The Gauteng education MEC said the party must understand why it exists and be decisive. “If we can’t be decisive then that’s the end of everything,” Lesufi said. “Our people feel let down by this movement.”
Lesufi was narrowly elected to the influential position with 574 votes compared to cooperative governance and traditional affairs MEC Lebogang Maile’s 543.
Lesufi is now a candidate to become the next Gauteng premier and take charge of SA’s economic powerhouse, which contributes about 35% to GDP.
Current premier David Makhura told Business Day recently that he would step down to make way for his successor to prepare for the 2024 national election, where the party’s electoral support is expected to dip below 50%.
The ANC in Gauteng lost control of the crucial metros of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane to DA-led coalitions during the 2021 municipal election after its national electoral support fell below the 50% mark for the first time since 1994.
The ANC’s electoral support has been declining in the province over the years, to 36.06% during the 2021 municipal elections from 45.84% and 59.66% during the 2016 and 2011 municipal elections respectively.
The province is faced with service delivery challenges pertaining to the supply of basic services such as housing, clinics, schools and water and electricity.
Minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele and Gauteng economic development MEC Parks Tau told Business Day on the sidelines of the provincial conference at the weekend that the newly elected leadership must focus on implementing the ANC service delivery programmes in the government.
The former executive mayors of Ekurhuleni (Gungubele) and Johannesburg (Tau) said this would win back people’s trust and help the party regain electoral support in the upcoming elections.
At the conference on Friday, Lesufi’s predecessor, Makhura,
harshly criticised the ANC, characterising it as a “self-absorbed organisation” at war with itself.
He said the party focuses on things that do not matter.
“These are fundamental issues we must confront. We must not lie to ourselves. We disappointed people, the core base of the ANC, the people in our townships,” he said, stressing that if the party does not deal with those issues, “in 2024 we will be gone”.
Makhura’s views echoed those of the party’s national chair, mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, who told delegates attending the organisation’s Eastern Cape conference in May that the governing party had become “arrogant”, “out of touch with society”, and dogged by a “trust deficit”.
On Monday, Lesufi said: “We have no choice, the only way to bring the ANC to be at the centre of our people and service delivery is to renew it. South Africans are not waiting for the ANC to renew itself, they are continuing with their lives without the ANC.”
Lesufi said because Makhura is no longer ANC provincial chair does not mean there are two centres of power. “There is nothing wrong in having a premier who is not a provincial chair. Let’s not create confusion that is not there. David Makhura is premier of Gauteng and continues to be premier of this province. Any person who feels he will elbow him [out] or rush him out [of office], that person is wrong,” said Lesufi.
Responding to a question from Business Day, he said: “If it is out of [Makhura’s] own will that he wants to leave [office], I don’t think this executive will stop him. We are trying to get the ANC right, in order to get the government right. If you can’t ensure that the ANC is agile [and] services our people, you can send whoever you want to send in government and you won’t get it right.”
ANC Gauteng deputy chair and finance and e-governance MEC Nomantu Nkomo Ralehoko said what is expected of the provincial leadership is to implement ANC decisions: “We are not going to disappoint.”