Veterans to hold own consultative forum
FOLLOWING the boycott of the ANC’s two-day national consultative conference, the party’s veterans announced yesterday that they were planning a consultative conference this September.
This came after the veterans’ efforts to request for a separate consultative conference from the policy conference were shunned by the ANC top brass.
”We did take a decision that we are going to organise a national consultative conference. We are going to engage ANC members on discussions as to what must we do in this crisis… what is the criteria for the type of leadership which will lead this organisation out of this crisis?” Veteran Wally Serote said in Johannesburg.
The consultative conference, which would sit and discuss a way forward in resolving the ANC’s internal battles, would include all branches in all the provinces.
”The recommendations of that conference should spell out how to rescue and save the ANC, and how to regenerate it back to its values,” said Serote.
Murphy Morobe said the problems facing the ANC were immense and needed serious introspection, and not just “two days of discussions”.
The ANC’s consultative conference billed for today and tomorrow would be a futile exercise, he added.
”It was clear that there was no planning. Every time a discussion on consultative conference was held (with an ANC leader), a filtering process took place, resulting in us ending up with information that is completely different from what we initially discussed,” he said.
“There will always be those who deny there is a crisis. This is done in the hope that if you repeat a lie often enough, it will be seen as the truth.
“But that is an insult to every citizen of this country who every day of their lives see the consequences of the state capture project and its effect on their communities.”
Despite the boycott of the first two days, the veterans would participate in the policy conference from Sunday as individual ANC branch members.
Another ANC structure, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) national council, has also snubbed the entire five daylong conference, with its chairman Siphiwe Nyanda labelling it a ”futile exercise”.
The council said only a special consultative conference would save Africa’s oldest liberation movement.