It turned out to be a national general council of compromises for the ANC, as President Jacob Zuma delivered his closing address at the Durban Exhibition Centre on Friday.
ANC national general council special report
Contentious issues such as the media appeals tribunal and the nationalisation of mines have been deferred while the strongest position to emerge was the internal discipline of the ruling party.
“The NGC has directed the ANC leadership to be firm, decisive and consistent in the application of discipline and in rooting out factionalist and divisive tendencies, including within the NEC [national executive committee] itself,” he said to loud applause from about 2 000 delegates.
It appeared that Zuma finally provided the strong leadership on this issue that his critics have long been calling for. He amplified the general mood of the conference against behaviour such as “intimidation and disruption of meetings”. It was a veiled reference to the party’s youth league, which suffered a blow at the conference with a public rebuke from Zuma.
However the president offered the league and its firebrand leader Julius Malema some salve for their wounds in his closing address by affirming their right to table issues with the mother party, referring to the nationalisation issue.
The biggest applause, however, was for his statement that nationalisation had now become “an issue to be processed by the whole organisation” — and not just the youth league.
Robust debate
The controversial issue has been referred to the NEC, which must report back to the party at the next national conference in 2012.
Zuma emphasised that in the party’s culture of “robust debate, members of the ANC should use the art of persuasion to win people over”.
Meanwhile, the deadlock between the party and the country’s media over plans to regulate the industry have been alleviated, with the controversial media appeals tribunal proposal significantly watered down and dispatched to Parliament. Zuma’s note on the matter received muted applause, while he emphasised that the “ANC had no intention of muzzling the media”.
Delegates rose to applaud Zuma enthusiastically at the end of his address, breaking out into a rendition of his trademark song Awuleth’ Umshini Wami.
The party — which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2012 — has emerged from the NGC “stronger, stable, more focused and united than it was two years ago”, said the president.