ANC president Jacob Zuma moved on Thursday to quell dissent and dissatisfaction within the party about candidate lists by promising to remove “fraudulently” nominated councillors.
Speaking before embarking on the hustings in the Free State, Zuma promised that where a head-office task team found that there were irregularities councillors would be removed through by-elections to make way for community-nominated representatives.
The Mail & Guardian reported last week on a groundswell of unhappiness with the party’s campaign and fears that the ANC could lose support to a better-organised opposition during the elections.
The complaints raised by members included poor marketing strategies, internal fights about candidates and the exclusion of campaign head Fikile Mbalula. Acknowledging that features of the campaign had to change, Zuma, at a press conference at Luthuli House on Thursday announced measures to appease disgruntled ANC members. He was accompanied by Mbalula and ANC local elections head Ngoako Ramatlhodi.
“It has become apparent in our engagements with communities and our own structures, and from people who have been calling us directly, that in some instances and in some isolated areas the processes were unjustly interfered with and manipulated,” Zuma said.
“In the affected wards candidates that are preferred by our structures and communities were removed from the lists. This has understandably caused anger and frustration.
“The ANC leadership has taken the decision that the removal of preferred candidates from our lists should be properly investigated by a team to be set up by the ANC headquarters. The findings of this team will make it possible for the ANC to remove any candidates who were not preferred by our structures and our communities.”
The ANC this year adopted a candidate selection process that included community involvement, but this has created unexpected complications. These were just teething problems, Zuma insisted, and the ANC would continue to use this “innovation”.
Zuma’s announcement could bring Luthuli House into conflict with the regional and provincial structures that finalised the candidate lists. But it should strike a chord among other ANC members. Some have protested publicly against the candidates in their areas, others are either contesting the elections as independent candidates or have threatened not to vote or to go to court.
The ANC president encouraged party members who were standing as independent candidates to come back to the ANC. He also sounded confident that the ANC would regain control of the Western Cape. “We did not lose [in Cape Town and the province], but other parties came together in a coalition against the ANC,” he said.
“We always won the majority vote but with a small margin. We have to clear the perception that we have been losing elections there — it’s not true,” Zuma said. He repeated his assertion that the Western Cape was the only place in which apartheid remained well entrenched because there was service delivery in the rich areas but the poor areas were marginalised.
Zuma arrived 45 minutes late for the press conference and appeared jovial as he prepared to campaign in the Free State before heading to the Western Cape this weekend.