Former ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli
The organisational report to be delivered by outgoing ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli is likely to lift the veil on the extensive instability that has plagued the provincial executive committee (PEC) during its term in office.
Speaking to the Mail & Guardian last week, ANC provincial spokesperson Nhlakanipho Ntombela said the organisational report would cover several issues including the decline in the party’s support at the 2019 national and 2021 local government elections.
The ANC in the province was dealt a body blow in 2019 when its share of the electoral vote fell by 10 percentage points to 55.47% from 65.31% at the previous general elections in 2014. The party’s number of seats in the provincial legislature dropped from 54 to 44.
The 2021 elections further demonstrated the ANC’s loss of control in the eThekwini metro, falling below 50%, while it lost some of its district municipalities to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
“The report must make that reflection of what went wrong with our electoral support declining in the organisation. What were the factors leading to such,” Ntombela said, adding that it would also focus on the ANC’s losses in Newcastle and Richards Bay.
The report will also ponder the instability in the ANC’s ranks, with regional task teams holding on to six of the regions in the province by a thread.
These include the eThekwini region, the ANC’s largest, whose task team held the reins for more than two years. Another big region headed by a task team was Moses Mabhida, while others included the Lower South Coast and the General Gizanza region, home of outgoing provincial chair Sihle Zikalala.
“It might make an assessment of the state of the organisation in its functionality,” Ntombela said of the problems facing the party. “Fortunately, for now, all of your 11 regions have been launched and are ready for the task at hand.”
Another concern is that the provincial membership is becoming younger and localised to peri-urban areas, leaving room for the IFP to swoop in and pick up support in historically ANC-held rural areas.
“Those are the issues we must make an honest reflection on as an organisation. How do you lose so much power when you are the governing party, those are the issues the organisational report must make an introspection on which and allow members to engage on so that we can correct those things as we prepare for the national conference in December and the 2024 elections,” Ntombela said.
The incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma last year and its net effect on the province — including the unrest it triggered in July — will also form part of the report.
Zuma appears to still hold much sway for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, and Ntombela conceded that the PEC’s preparations for its conference involved the former leader.
The province has walked on eggshells around the issue of Zuma, with both Zikalala and Ntuli being booed during the former president’s court appearances for his corruption case, for their perceived failure to support him. Last year, the two allegedly approached the ANC’s top six officials, requesting that Zuma receive a presidential pardon after he was convicted of contempt by the constitutional court for defying an order to appear before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture.
The two biggest regions in KwaZulu-Natal, Musa Dladla and eThekwini, were apparently among those that agreed the implementation of the ANC’s step-aside rule — which stipulates that those facing criminal charges must step away from their party positions — must be challenged at its policy conference later this month and the national election conference later this year. The Musa Dladla region resolved this issue at its conference in May.
The province was deemed to have been the biggest loser at the ANC’s previous conference in 2017, when its chosen candidate Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, narrowly lost her bid to become the party’s president.
KwaZulu-Natal had gone to that conference divided, with a group aligned to Senzo Mchunu taking the then provincial executive committee to court and winning a case to have it nullified just before the 2017 conference.
Not only did the province — the biggest in the ANC — not manage to get its preferred candidate elected as president, it also failed to have a presence among the ANC’s top officials for this term.
It now hopes to undo that, but with multiple leaders expressing a desire to lead in the ANC, the province is divided on who to back.
Ntombela said Ntuli’s report would reflect on how to reverse this and ensure that the province gets a seat among the ANC top six in December.
“That is introspection we must make as an organisation that the infighting amongst ourselves has not held our place in the organisation, how to correct that moving forward, notwithstanding it is a normal process in the ANC to contest one another but once you’ve contested one another what happens after,” he said.
“It was for the first time that in KwaZulu-Natal we had a court case challenging the legality of the PEC in court. There are those issues on which we must reflect, so that we prepare for the 2024 elections and December national elections, we can be clear and know what not to do moving forward.”
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