Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Corruption is number one, says Gwede
ANC leaders’ credibility on the line
ANC national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, has slammed those who are adamant that President Jacob Zuma will not be removed from his position before his term ends in 2019.
Speaking in Wattville in Ekurhuleni yesterday where the party was holding a wreath laying ceremony for former ANC president Oliver Tambo, Mantashe said the party’s biggest challenge was not policy orientation but loss of credibility due to allegations of corruption against leaders of the organisation.
The ceremony was part of the ANC’s preparations for its 106th anniversary celebrations which will take place in the Eastern Cape on January 13.
Mantashe said the new leadership had the responsibility to ensure that the image of the party improved, to help it recover from a credibility deficit in the eyes of the South African public.
He said the party’s image was battered due to allegations of corruption against its leaders.
“The biggest challenge of the ANC is not policy. I hear people talking about the radical resolutions we took. The biggest challenge facing the ANC is the ability to save its image and reputation,” Mantashe said.
SACP deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila, who was also present at the event, called on the new ANC leadership to deal swiftly with those who were corrupt.
“You can’t have an ANC that is seen as synonymous with corruption. It can’t be.
“We can’t have an ANC that is having a trust deficit between itself as the movement of the people and the people.
“Our responsibility and other office bearers is to ensure that we reconnect with the people,” he said.
Mantashe said some in the party were wrongly claiming that the ANC’s problems would be solved by the current left-sounding rhetoric of radical economic transformation.
“You can be having a lot of rhetoric that sounds left but if we are having left rhetoric and we act right, people will see through us.
“We are taking the leadership of the ANC at a time when we cannot go further low, we are at our lowest and we must recover,” Mantashe said.
His remarks come as backers of newly-elected party president Cyril Ramaphosa are preparing a fresh move to ensure that Jacob Zuma is removed as state president at the first meeting of the new national executive committee next week.
Mantashe said Zuma was not a no-go area as the new leadership looked at ways of saving the party from decline.
“The weakness of the last two, three years has been personification of politics, we can’t personalise politics.
“As we analyse politics, there is nothing called a no-go area,” he said to resounding applause.
Mantashe said some leaders were factional, accusing them of claiming that the election outcome of the top six was six-six, referring to those who belonged to slates of Ramaphosa and former African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma who also contested the position.