Heed lessons or face calamity, Mashatile tells ANC leaders
ANC Gauteng provincial chairman Paul Mashatile has delivered the most frank assessment of the ANC’s performance in the elections, telling party leaders that the ruling party is in tatters and warning that it is heading for “a calamity of unprecedented proportions” unless major changes are made.
In a speech prepared for delivery at the ANC’s provincial executive committee lekgotla on Friday, Mashatile said the crisis in which the ANC found itself was self-inflicted.
Mashatile’s blunt analysis was in contrast to the assessment of the national executive committee which, when it took “collective responsibility” for the election results, boasted that the ANC had still received 54% of the total votes across the country.
“No matter how we look at the situation presently, we are at a tipping point. Our movement generally, and the ANC in particular, are in tatters,” Mashatile said.
The tone of his political overview came as no surprise as his province has long broken ranks with the President Jacob Zuma-aligned NEC on several matters, including the Nkandla scandal. Gauteng was the most affected by the ANC’s dwindling support as it lost two major metros to the opposition.
Without mentioning names, Mashatile appeared to be laying the blame at Zuma’s door for displaying arrogance by claiming the ANC would rule “until Jesus comes back”.
“Because we got away with it a few times, we became complacent to a point where we believed our own propaganda that we will rule for eternity,” he told the gathering.
Mashatile warned ANC leaders in the province to resist the temptation to believe that the ANC had won the local elections.
This, he said, would plunge the ANC further into denial. “We need to look one another in the face and tell ourselves the whole truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.”
In Gauteng, the ANC’s support stood at 44.55% while the DA got 38.37% of the vote and the EFF 11.09%. The ANC failed to reach 50% in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Mogale City.
Aside from the ANC in the Western Cape, the party in Gauteng has felt the wrath of voters the loudest.
Mashatile said the message from the results was that all was not well in the ANC.
“The ANC is riddled with all the wrong and alien tendencies of institutionalised factionalism, crippling divisions, spiralling illdiscipline, despicable arrogance and inexplicable denialism,” he said.
In his five-page prepared speech, Mashatile did not apportion any of the blame for the decline in support to Zuma, but talked of the state of the organisation.
He said the election results showed that voters believed that ANC leaders were arrogant, corrupt, distant, dismissive, pompous and condescending.
“In my view, this constitutes a basket of issues that led to the electoral outcome that represents feedback from the electorate.
“In broad terms, these issues are leadership, unmanaged expectations, trust deficit and the economic reality for the majority of our people,” Mashatile said.
The ANC needed to “leave no stone unturned” and have “no holy cows” in the assessment of the situation.
“We can ill-afford to pussyfoot around the issues when our movement is going astray and our country is facing a precipice,” he said, adding that the starting point of dealing with the crises was honesty.
Mashatile proposed to the ANC Gauteng leadership that the party needed to convene a broad consultative conference in an attempt to restore the glory of the ANC.
He believed a consultative conference would yield better results for the party than an early elective conference.