Elective conference has ANC scrambling

THE ANC is scrambling to declare all participating branches ready for its 54th national elective conference in almost five weeks.

While 60% of the branches have wrapped up their processes through branch general meetings, the remaining 40% have until Wednesday.

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe yesterday said the party’s leadership was working tirelessly to ensure the branches met the deadline and warned no extensions or exceptions would be made for BGMS to take place.

“Many provinces are doing relatively well. There is one province that is 90% in their BGMS. There are provinces around 76%. There is also a province at 29%. We are going to push provinces to finish the work they are doing,” he said.

Mantashe put the different progress of BGMS down to the fact that provinces moved at different paces.

It, however, remains to be seen if provincial structures can meet the BGM deadline.

Mantashe was speaking on the sidelines of the ANC’S special national executive committee (NEC) meeting in Irene, near Pretoria, yesterday.

The four-day meeting is set to deliberate, among other things, outcomes of the recent ANC’S Veterans’ League Conference, the chaotic Eastern Cape elective conference which resulted in a number of injuries after party delegates hurled chairs at each other, as well as a draft organisational report which Mantashe would present to the party’s top leadership.

He said the special meeting was to ensure that NEC members could add their input before the final report was drafted. At the end of the meeting, the party would also pronounce on its findings in the impasse between structures in the Eastern Cape.

The road leading to the much-anticipated elective conference from December 16 to 20 was not only saddled with delays in branch meetings but a plethora of court cases over leadership disputes at some provinces.

Mantashe, however, warned that the ANC intended to deal swiftly with the court cases.

“We can’t plan a national conference on the basis of court cases. We are planning a national conference and are working for it to be a success. We will deal with anything that detracts from it being a success,” he said.

He said the ANC was already winning in some of the cases.

“The justice system is there all the time… we are winning almost of all of them. That’s why in the KZN one we are appealing because we are convinced it misinterpreted the ANC constitution.”