The African National Congress was looking past the election and planning for its upcoming term in government, secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Friday.
“We’ve looked into how effectively should we be governing — that’s why we can report here that we are already at a stage of a white paper.
“It’s not a government white paper, it’s an ANC white paper on the structure of the executive,” Mantashe said at a media briefing following a national executive committee meeting in Kempton Park.
“It’s not just looking at how do we package portfolios it is about how to ensure that we govern effectively,” he said.
The ruling party, confident of being returned to government after the April 22 poll, was in the final stages of its white paper which delves into the splitting of some ministries and the possibility of new ministries in the executive.
Describing the NEC meeting as “very important”, Mantashe said the party’s leadership did not discuss the corruption case against Jacob Zuma.
“We didn’t discuss the Jacob Zuma case in the NEC … because we think that there are processes that are happening at another level, they don’t require the NEC to even talk about them,” he said.
This followed media reports that the National Prosecuting Authority was preparing to drop its graft case against the party president.
The white paper looks at oversight, monitoring and the evaluation of government’s work and beefing up delivery through cutting out bureaucracy which hampers the provision of services.
The party would be intensifying its election campaign in the final stretch ahead of the poll, hoping for a “decisive victory”, Mantashe said.
He said the party was not as “obsessed” with a two-thirds majority.
A two-thirds majority was required to amend the Constitution, which the party did not plan to do.
“It is only the constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds, that’s why we don’t have an obsession because … we didn’t amend the Constitution when we had 70%.
“We have no plans of amending the Constitution and therefore we don’t have the obsession about those numbers but we have an obsession that we must win and we must win in all the provinces,” Mantashe said.
This included the fiercely contested Western Cape where the secretary general said the party had turned “the most dangerous corner”, saying people were returning to the ANC.
At the same time, Mantashe extended an olive branch to those who left the party.
“Our view is that if we continue engaging people, they will come back to the ANC. Actually, the message that people who have left the ANC must come back is a message that we are going to actually issue to everybody,” he said.
Dodgy funders
The Mail & Guardian on Friday reported that the party was keeping mum on its funding sources for the election campaign, but party insiders involved in fundraising say its election effort is heavily subsidised by the ruling parties in Libya, Angola, China and India.
A source involved in fundraising said the party began actively fund-raising in these countries for its election coffers before Polokwane. The ANC’s initial election budget for the 2009 election totalled about R100-million, excluding travel and logistical arrangements, which cost the most, a source said.
He said the party has also received funds from oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, one of Africa’s most notorious dictatorships.
The ANC’s funding strategy is based on donations by individuals, but the big money comes from ruling parties elsewhere.
Zuma and ANC delegations have been travelling, ostensibly to build historical relationships with other ruling parties but also to raise funds, insiders say.