The African National Congress (ANC) has dismissed a media report on its national policy conference in Midrand last week.
The report in the Sunday Times was ”wholly and deliberately fabricated”, the ANC charged in a statement released late on Sunday night.
”Not only does the report fundamentally misrepresent important resolutions of the conference, it makes false and insulting claims about the integrity and discipline of the ANC’s senior leaders,” the party claimed.
Under the headline, Mbeki defies ANC, the paper reported that President Thabo Mbeki had insisted he could still stand for a third term as ANC president, despite overwhelming opposition from delegates at the policy conference.
However, the ANC described the claim of defiance as ”ludicrous”.
Conference delegates had been ”emphatic” in their support of a united ANC, it said.
”No amount of inaccurate and malicious reporting can reverse the positions of ANC members.”
The ANC said there was general agreement at the conference that the ANC president ”preferably” be its candidate for the country’s Presidency, but there was a strong view that this not be made a principle.
It was also resolved that the right of any member to elect or be elected to any position in the movement be upheld.
The conference decided that the term of office of ANC leaders ”remain as stipulated in the [party’s] constitution”.
”This means that there’s no need for a term limit on the leadership of the ANC,” it said in its statement.
The conference resolved that the ANC remained the key strategic centre of power for the exercising of collective leadership over the state and society.
It found the existing procedures for electing ANC leaders ”adequate”.
The ANC said that whatever the party’s final decision on the selection of a candidate for the country’s Presidency, it had been agreed that there was no need to change the existing election procedures and provisions in the ANC constitution.
”Therefore, contrary to the claims in the Sunday Times, no ANC member is precluded from election to any position in the organisation,” it said.
The paper’s newsdesk could not be reached for comment on Sunday night.
Tradition under strain
Any Mbeki bid to keep control of the ANC would defy tradition, which since Nelson Mandela led the victory against apartheid in 1994 has seen the party leader automatically named as its presidential candidate.
Regularly commanding about two-thirds of the vote, the ANC is virtually assured of winning the national presidency in 2009.
However, the party has come under strain in recent months as its Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and South African Communist Party allies openly accused Mbeki of abandoning the ANC’s anti-apartheid era promises to the poor, most of whom remain mired in desperate conditions 13 years after the end of white rule.
The ANC policy conference opened during the crippling public-service strike over low pay and benefits, underscoring growing anger in the powerful labour movement.
Cosatu said on Sunday it believes most ANC rank-and-file members stand behind labour’s demands and that the party ”remains first and foremost a liberation movement with a bias toward the working class”.
While deeper arguments rumble over the ANC’s ideological direction, the leadership race has crystallised opinion largely around the personalities of the major candidates.
Mbeki, who has led South Africa since 1999, is admired for his grasp of policy and international acumen, but often depicted as a cool technocrat more comfortable hob-nobbing with business leaders than with South Africa’s impoverished rural electorate.
Zuma is widely popular, but remains shadowed by the corruption case that spurred Mbeki to sack him as national deputy president in 2005.
Zuma, who calls the corruption allegations a political vendetta, was also campaigning last week, telling union supporters the future of South Africa’s revolution was at stake. ”They [revolutions] can either go forward or move sideways, depending on which side they move to. Or they can collapse,” he said, adding that he himself is a son of the working class. – Sapa, Reuters