ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe tells the Mail & Guardian‘s Matuma Letsoalo and Mandy Rossouw that past mistakes will not be held against leaders.
Apart from your full-time job as ANC secretary general, you also hold other positions, including chairperson of Jipsa’s Technical Committee, executive manager of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and chairperson of the South African Communist Party. Don’t you think there is a conflict of interest?
I’m no longer with the DBSA. I handed in my resignation earlier this year. But I don’t think there is a conflict with regards to my position as the secretary general of the ANC and SACP chairperson. Moses Kotane served as treasurer general of the ANC while he was also secretary general for the SACP for many years. In the early Nineties there was a debate about [people with] many hats. It is a mystery, because activists get demands on their time and their experiences and they play different roles. What is important is how you manage that. It does not become a principle issue, it’s a time issue.
Last week the ANC issued a strongly worded statement attacking Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke for his remarks in the Sunday Times. This created the impression that the judicial system was under attack from the ANC. Do you regret issuing such a statement?
No. If you noticed, we never retracted the statement. I was making a distinction between the judiciary and a judge at a birthday party. It is not the same. He becomes a citizen who is participating in a public debate and he must not want the protection of the Constitution when he does that.
Because we sit at [birthday] parties, we eat, we drink, we talk and once we do that, you can’t say ‘I’m a judge’. If the honourable judge says what political parties think, that is not an issue. But once the judge starts talking about the ANC and goes to lower levels to talk about delegates, that person is no longer talking in general. That is an offensive and an attack on the ANC. My responsibility is to defend the ANC.
Did the ANC have more information than what was quoted in the Sunday Times?
We took issue with what was in the Sunday Times. In future, we will deal with an issue as it is reported by the Mail & Guardian or any other paper.
So you based the statement and the discussion at the national working committee meeting on that one quote?
Yes.
Was there no attempt to get more information about this or find out what actually happened?
No. We don’t need to do that. He was at a [birthday] party, where the main reference was to the ANC and its delegates. People who hold important positions in society must appreciate the responsibility that goes with it.
The judiciary must earn respect, they must not hide behind the Constitution and be reckless about it. The judges must earn that respect from society and act in a way that befits their status in society.
Would you blame the previous ANC leadership for the divisions within the organisation?
The worst thing that can happen to any leader is to blame predecessors. Once you do that, you are actually trying to breed a scapegoat. When you’re elected to leadership, you are expected to deal with issues. It is a continuous process. You are taking over from the legacy and you take that organisation forward.
We won’t undermine the strength of the previous leadership.
How are you going to deal with the divisions?
Factions in an organisation are not eliminated by decree. Factions thrive in a situation where structures are weak. Where structures work, sections do not survive because they know whether they unite a faction or not. Strong structures kill factions.
What are your plans to unite the ANC?
I have no plan of my own. Everybody is mandated to go back to branches and provinces to report. From April to August, we say let’s align our branches, provinces and regions to the terms of reference adopted by the conference.
Would you say there was a disconnection between branches and the NEC?
That is not what I’m saying. We are going to implement the programme as adopted by conference. My sense is that if people are deployed and they do the work, they will find more common ground.
How is the party going to manage the issue of two centres of power?
There are no two centres of power. There is one strategic centre and that is the ANC as it is the party in power. That centre deploys cadres of the ANC to different responsibilities.
Already, there were complaints from some ANC members earlier this year, when President Thabo Mbeki announced the names of the new SABC board.
The previous ANC NEC agreed on that. I’m not going to take an issue with that because that predecessor structure took those decisions and they are equally binding on me. The communications sub-committee of the ANC interrogated that process and therefore communicated its decisions to ANC members in Parliament. Any member of the ANC who says anything else is not loyal to his or her decision. That is ill discipline.
Do you think Jacob Zuma should become the next president of the country?
The ANC conference resolved that matter. Even the word ‘preferable’ that was used in the policy conference was deleted by the national conference.
In the event that Zuma might be charged, would that influence the ANC stance on this matter?
That’s hypothesis. I don’t know whether he will be in court or convicted. But the resolution of the conference is that the ANC president will be the ANC candidate in the next election.
Why did the ANC decide to appoint a committee to look at the arms deal again?
The committee must collate a report that will tell the NEC what is happening in that space. If we don’t do it, we are going to depend on snippets of information.
If there is a report to the legislature, bring it. If there is a report in the public, bring it. We must not just be happy to say the charges against the president of the ANC relates to the arms deal. That is why we don’t call it an investigation, we want the information that is already there. If opposition parties say ‘open the arms deal’, we must not just say ‘no’ based on a gut feel. We must say there is no reason to reopen the arms deal because the facts of the situation are as follows.
A review on guidelines on lobbying during elections is to be done. What has the ANC learned from its recent experiences concerning this issue?
There is nothing wrong with robust discussion and debates. There is nothing wrong with people lobbying hard. There is everything wrong with vilifying and gossiping.
We should not give people descriptions that are manufactured. If you prefer a particular candidate, it’s better to say I prefer this particular candidate because of his strength. But once I begin to say that that candidate is a piece of wood, you are beginning to cross the psychological line of lobbying. You are getting into personalising the issue. It is as bad as releasing the list of your preferred candidate to the media, as the ANC Youth League did. For me that is totally unacceptable and this should not be allowed because it causes divisions in the ANC.
Why has the deployment committee of the ANC been disbanded?
It has been revived. We are putting it together now. There must be detailed political discussions before we constitute it. The deputy president of the ANC [Kgalema Motlanthe] will be the chairperson.