Fears ‘councillors may quit ANC ticket’
● The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal fears that some of its members may contest next year’s local government elections as independent candidates if infighting persists in its regions.
This may lead to hung municipalities and require the party to enter into coalition governments.
The party is now racing against the clock to instil unity in its ranks — saying it cannot afford to go to the elections divided.
Police minister Bheki Cele revealed this week that authorities are investigating eight criminal cases in the province that they believe to be politically motivated.
On Tuesday an ANC councillor was gunned down in Umlazi township, south of Durban.
ANC provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli told the Sunday Times that the ANC is in deep crisis. There are problems around service delivery and leadership, he said, but most of what needs fixing are its own internal poli- tics.
“Immediate fears going into elections divided is that outcomes will lead to coalitions. Evidence from the last elections tells us we are not yet mature [enough] to handle the politics of coalitions,” he said.
To avoid this the ANC has set up platforms where leaders of different factions can come together to iron out issues before regions elect new leaders.
Ntuli said the intention is not to influence conference outcomes but to reinforce political debate that results in peaceful political competition as opposed to political intolerance and violent political competition.
“A culture of impunity towards the value system of the ANC has entrenched itself for quite some time. It was allowed to thrive. Comrades were able to occupy leadership positions without anything of value that they can offer. To turn that around is a difficult task.”
Ntuli said the provincial executive committee decided to convene these consultations in regions that are due to elect new leaders. These include the hotly contested eThekwini, Moses Mabhida, General Gizenga Mpanza, Lower South Coast and Josiah Gumede regions.
“The [provincial executive committee] mandated the provincial officials to see through the process of uniting the organisation, that work was not just about getting comrades who are disagreeing about the future of their regions but it was also about how do we manage deployments in general in the province. The task was to manage the organisational work in a way that reinforces the confidence of our people and also reduces internal tension.”
The period following the highly contested eThekwini conference in 2015 and the build-up to the 2016 local government elections saw killings that led to the appointment of the Moerane commission of inquiry to investigate the root cause of the killings.
Ntuli said the party is trying to avoid a similar situation.
“What we are trying to achieve is, let’s have conferences that even if there are differences about who should lead, processes must be of a nature that each one of us at the end will be happy with the outcome because it was free and fair, and we are determined to support the elected so that they succeed. That is the mentality we are trying to instil.”
Meanwhile, Cele revealed that “more than 200 people have been arrested out of the political violence” and said he is optimistic that the arrests will lead to convictions.
“We have sharpened the task team. The team works with prosecutors so that cases are prosecutiondirected by the time we take them to court. There are several ready cases but … the situation [the pandemic], we have been victims of that.”
Ntuli said the party is concerned about the upsurge in killings in the province but “when councillors are being killed — we are worried, yes we are concerned about the level of killings in the province generally — but equally we are worried about killings of not just members of the ANC but leaders of our people.”