Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
ANC will not give up on Western Cape, says Mantashe
THE TIME has come for people to stop “basking in the sun and waiting for the government to deliver”, said ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe yesterday.
Speaking after he addressed a small crowd of ANC members in Zwelethemba township in Worcester in the Boland, Mantashe said it was understandable that many people were becoming impatient for houses, among other things, because they could see the progress that had been made but were still waiting for theirs.
Earlier this week Mantashe said the governing party would be reclaiming the 1955 Freedom Charter as its own, because “every Jack and Jill” was claiming to be its true custodians, but he made it plain yesterday this did not mean people could sit back and wait for free houses, for example.
“All we’re saying to our people is you can’t be passive and wait for the government to deliver. Do your work and the government must come in,” Mantashe said.
He suggested there should be “housing brigades” in which peo- ple participated in the building of their own homes, “instead of sleeping and basking in the sun and waiting for the government to deliver”.
Commenting on the decision to hold the ANC’s 103rd anniversary celebrations in the DA-run Western Cape, Mantashe said the party would never give up on the province.
“We’ll continue trying so that the people of the Western Cape themselves must discover the importance of liberating them.”
He repeated the accusation levelled at the City of Cape Town that it had imposed strict conditions on the ANC in an attempt to practice “influx control”.
“This week actually exposed the Western Cape for what it is, that it is actually some corner that is a bastion of apartheid,” Mantashe said.
“It can only happen here because there’s a desire to keep the Western Cape white, and the City of Cape Town clean of any contamination of all these colours. (Today) we’re going to paint Cape Town yellow.”
However, Mantashe admitted that divisions in the ANC in the province had contributed to its poor electoral showing.
He said if the party was united it would be able to recapture the Western Cape, and called on the provincial leadership to realise they needed each other in order to win.
“We can come here 10 times, 20 times, but it is the leadership of the ANC in the Western Cape, in the regions, that must appreciate that unity is the key,” Mantashe said.
While the DA, in particular, has seized on the ANC’s loss of support in key metros like Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni as a window of opportunity in the coming local government elections next year, Mantashe warned that if the party wasn’t careful it could just as easily lose Cape Town.
He was unfazed by the prospect of further upheaval in Parliament, following a rowdy few months last year after the elections.