New forum angers the ANC

The ANC is preparing to go to war with a new organisation that purports to be broadening the debate on subjects considered taboo in the 95-year-old liberation movement.

The Progressive ANC Voters Network, which was founded by, among others, leader of the Treatment Action Campaign Zackie Achmat, has been rejected by the ANC as a cheap ploy by people with ulterior motives who use the name of the ANC to advance their causes.

The organisation claims to be a forum in which ANC voters, supporters and sympathisers can debate issues like the internecine battle for succession in the party and ‘contribute to progressive outcomes from the 2007 ANC national conference”.

The network also hopes to discuss South Africa’s crime-fighting strategies, the ANC-led government’s stance on Zimbabwe and the HIV/Aids pandemic.

One of the network’s founding members, Byron Morris-Madikizela, a relative of ANC stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, said: ‘It is important that we broaden the debate around the election of the ANC president and its leadership, because these matters go beyond just the ANC.”

Morris-Madikizela said the network was aware that some ANC members were sceptical about it, but said ‘the ANC has not tried to stop us from using its name. We were always expecting mixed reactions to something like this, but we hope to work with the ANC in future. We hope this hostility will come to an end, because there is a general feeling out there that the network is a good thing. Our standpoint is that communities must now take a direct interest in the goings-on at the ANC.”

Ahead of its launch in November last year, the network said in a press release: ‘The crisis of leadership is based on the absence of sustained engagement by the working class and progressive activists in the ANC. This absence has allowed careerists, nationalists, the emerging black capitalist class and the traditional capitalists to be the dominant voice in the party.”

The network plans to release three policy documents in the run-up to the ANC policy conference in July, which will be distributed to ANC MPs, its branches, the media and NGOs.

However, ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said the party was sceptical about the network and that it sought to undermine the leadership of the ANC and the processes of the party. ‘We don’t know anything about this organisation. It is wrong for them to use the platform of the ANC without even talking to it, without even explaining to the ANC who they are [and] who qualifies to take part in this forum. We don’t have a problem with any groups setting themselves up to debate any issue, but we object to the use of the name of the ANC.”

Ngonyama also objected to a public meeting held by the network in Mannenburg, Cape Town, on Wednesday.

‘This is undermining the provincial leadership and undermining the ANC in general. How can they organise communities to discuss the leadership of the ANC outside ANC structures?”

Ngonyama said the ANC was gathering information on the functioning of the network with a view to challenging the ‘exploitation of the ANC brand”. ‘I am not surprised that Zackie Achmat was part of the organisers of the public meeting in Mannenburg.”

The Progressive ANC Voters Network is scheduled to hold a forum in Mannenburg to educate people about how the ANC president will be elected at the December conference.

Ngonyama also said he could not fathom why the network would want to hijack ANC programmes. ‘There is already a vibrant debate within the ANC about the composition of our organisation, its political direction, the composition of its leadership and the national elective conference.”