African National Congress (ANC) presidential contender Tokyo Sexwale criticised the current state of the ANC on Friday, saying it is marked by ”character assassinations, smear campaigns, mudslinging, whispering campaigns and rumour-mongering”.
None of these, he told an ANC Youth League fund-raising dinner, has anything to do with the ”quest to achieve the objective of providing a better quality of life for all our citizens”.
Sexwale, who received a standing ovation at the end of his speech, recalled that the plan of those who assassinated former South African Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani was to plunge the country into chaos. Comparing this to what is happening within the ANC and its alliance, he asked: ”Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
The former Gauteng premier and prominent businessman also emphasised that many of the ANC’s leaders have been involved in business, pointing out that the late chief Albert Luthuli had been chairperson of the African Sugar Growers’ Association and Walter Sisulu had also been involved in business. ”So we like businessmen in the ANC,” he said.
Sexwale, who did not mention his presidential ambitions — he has said he has been lobbied and will stand for ANC president at the end of the year if nominated by sufficient branches — said the ANC faces a choice of either living in a fool’s paradise or dealing with ”reactionary issues around factionalism, tribalist tendencies, provincialism, regionalism and ethnicity”.
Leaders’ behaviour
While he did not mention either ANC president Thabo Mbeki or his deputy, Jacob Zuma, Sexwale said that the ”trading of insults in public, derogatory statements and similar demoralising public conduct on the part of leaders who should be exemplary must be speedily checked”.
If this does not happen, the ANC will lose the respect of the people and their trust and confidence.
Against this background, Sexwale said, it is hardly surprising there are ”increasingly daring mass protests and the disturbingly violent demonstrations and other forms of lawlessness triggered by social delivery concerns”.
”Much of what is happening in this creeping social discontent can be traced back to seeping divisions, factional tendencies and other forms of negative conduct emanating from ourselves.”
Pointing to the situation in Khutsong where ”we appear to have lost control”, he asked where else in the country this is happening.
Looking ahead to the ANC’s December conference where it will elect new office bearers, Sexwale said this process has ”already overheated”. It is necessary to ”disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are going to elect a superstar or populist know-it-all who is going to come with a magic wand to solve our problems”.
What is required is the election of a leadership collective that knows the responsibilities and demands of a developmental state, knows the challenges that currently faced the movement ”and is forever mindful of the need to provide a better life for all”. — Sapa