Former president Thabo Mbeki.
Former ANC president Thabo Mbeki was left out of the names recommended by the ANC top five to lead the governing party’s renewal commission.
The commission, which will be composed of 10 members of the party’s elders, will be charged with drafting the ANC’s programme of unity and renewal for the next decade.
Two ANC insiders who attended the party’s national working committee (NWC) meeting on Monday told the Mail & Guardian that they were shocked to learn that Mbeki, who has been at the centre of renewal in the organisation, had been left out.
NWC members demanded an explanation for his omission.
“We didn’t get a satisfactory answer. It just didn’t make sense because the President [Cyril Ramaphosa] has been using Mbeki as his champion for this project so why leave him out now?”
The NWC resolved to add Mbeki to the list. The recommended names will be discussed at the next meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee.
Mbeki has been criss-crossing the country at the behest of ANC provincial leaders and recently met with the party’s Free State regional and provincial leaders to help to fix the fractured movement.
A draft ANC document leaked to the media in January stated that the renewal commission would engage branches and analyse the state of the party’s organisational structures, cadre development, political education and policy-making capacity, among other issues.
The document said the commission would produce a report to the ANC’s policy conference scheduled for June, before it is adopted by the party’s elective conference in December.
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