Delegates return to the African National Congress’s (ANC) policy conference on Friday morning for a third day of concentrated debate.
Much of the day will be taken up by plenary sessions — behind closed doors — on the strategy and tactics document, which outlines the ANC’s broad socio-economic vision, and a document, titled the Organisational Review, on the shape of the party.
On Thursday, delegates sitting in 12 separate commissions debated as part of the review a set of proposals that could decide whether President Thabo Mbeki will be allowed to stand for a third term as party leader.
Those debates were also held behind closed doors, but on Friday morning there will be a media briefing on the outcome of those talks.
Friday’s plenaries are scheduled to end at 9.30pm, and the conference ends on Saturday.
Wooing the workers
Meanwhile, as other delegates pressed on with shaping their vision for the party and the country, the organisation’s deputy president, Jacob Zuma, took time off on Thursday to woo the workers.
He made an appearance at the national conference of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union in Pretoria, where Mbeki earlier in the week failed to show as expected.
Zuma told the workers there were ”very serious debates” at the policy conference about the structure of the party. Whether Mbeki will be restricted from serving a third term as head of the party will affect Zuma’s own leadership aspirations.
Zuma called on delegates to realise the importance of a year when the ANC is holding two national conferences within months of one another.
The 2009 elections will see the end of Mbeki’s second term as president of the country, he said to much applause. ”And therefore, the decision we take in this [policy] conference must be taken into account.”
He also stressed workers’ importance in the anti-apartheid struggle and the national democratic revolution (NDR). ”I come from the workers … The ABCs of the politics, I was taught in the working class. Since then, I have understood the importance of workers in the NDR.” — Sapa