It is only logical that when a ruling party elects its own leadership it prefers also to be electing the leadership of the country, the Gauteng African National Congress (ANC) said on Tuesday.
ANC provincial secretary David Makhura was speaking at a press conference after the provincial executive committee’s (PEC) meeting earlier this month.
”Any ruling party has an aspiration its leadership is the leadership to put to the country.
”We are assessing where the ANC and the country are today and where we want to take the ANC and the country in the next five years?”
Makhura criticised the media’s pigeonholing of ANC figures into the camps of particular candidates.
”We have refused to think that dealing with ANC issues is to express yourself in accordance with a particular individual.”
Makhura said the PEC had begun ”very, very frank” preliminary discussions on the national leadership question.
The provincial conference scheduled for early October would consolidate a ”common approach” to the leadership question ahead of the national nomination process in the same month. A conference in December will elect a new party president.
He said determining a common approach with the PEC did not mean the province would immediately nominate specific candidates.
”We may not come to the candidate.”
Makhura said the provincial ANC was determined not to waste the next five years.
There was a danger of this because ”if the ANC emerges bruised from the leadership battle, the next five years can be wasted years”.
Instead he said the ”unity of the ANC is sacrosanct”.
”You are going to be pretty shocked. You are going to be surprised that in this province we are going to emerge agreed. When the time comes for thinking on individuals we are going to be united even on that.”
Makhura said: ”We are confident the ANC will emerge united from [the national conference to be held in] Limpopo.”
Makhura also reported back on the PEC’s discussion about service-delivery protests taking place in the province.
He said the PEC acknowledged communities had raised ”real” issues during these protests.
”Most of these issues revolve around housing delivery, provision of electricity to new houses, access to water and sanitation.”
Makhura said service delivery needed to be ”speeded” across Gauteng and communication between the government and communities improved.
He condemned the infighting between disgruntled ANC members, which seemed to have caused some of the protests.
”Inevitably, infighting takes away the focus of the ANC from the real issues.”
Makhura said a better police response to the protests was needed.
It was not good enough to arrest people after the protest took place.
Rather, intelligence should identify and diffuse potential hotspots before they erupted.
Makhura also said the national government could help prevent more protests by speeding up land reform.
Many people who protested about inadequate living conditions lived on plots belonging to private farmers.
In those cases the provincial government could not help because it did not own the land, he said.
While the PEC condemned violent protests, it welcomed peaceful protest as a democratic right.
”Peaceful protests draw the attention of the authorities to failures or inadequacies of public policy or programmes,” he said. — Sapa