The African National Congress’s (ANC) involvement of the community in selecting councillors for the first time in 2011 is an “exciting exercise”, the party’s secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Tuesday.
“It’s quite an exciting approach … in a sense we’re giving people an opportunity to comment,” he said in Johannesburg. “It’s a good process … it gives us value.”
The Sowetan has reported that the nomination of ANC councillors in Soweto had been marred by accusations that the community’s preferred candidates were being excluded in favour of those preferred by party leadership.
The newspaper reported that ANC members in Green Village, Soweto, protested on Monday, accusing an ANC leader of tampering with the nomination list.
Gauteng ANC spokesperson Dumisa Ntuli said the process of selecting candidates in the province was “fair, transparent and democratic”.
Objections could be lodged with the party’s regional list committee or the provincial list committee.
“We know that there are chance-takers and those who mobilise people to protest for something they know is against the procedure of the guidelines or purely for their own selfish factional agendas,” he said.
Mantashe said the process of selecting candidates was still an ANC process.
“When people accuse the ANC of tampering with the selection … they think it ceases to be an ANC process,” he said.
Preparedness to serve
ANC branches nominated candidates — a minimum of four, with 10% support. The shortlisted candidates were then taken to the community where they are questioned and evaluated.
Mantashe said the candidate list then went to a screening committee where the candidate’s curriculum vitae was examined.
However, the criteria for the party was not a degree, but the “preparedness” of the candidate to serve, he said.
President Jacob Zuma’s administration’s first year in office was marred by violent service delivery protests, with councillors largely at the centre of community gripes.
However, the protests started about six years earlier, said Centre for the Study of Democracy director Professor Steven Friedman.
The main cause of the problems was the gulf between the community and their councillors, who were largely imposed on them “from above”, he said.
“The response under [former president Thabo Mbeki] was he said: ‘If you don’t like a candidate, tell us and we give you new ones’, but again this was not listening to the community, just imposing. Clearly that hasn’t worked,” said Friedman.
‘Who is the community?’
He said that while the new system was a step in the right direction toward bridging the gap between the councillor and communities, it was open to manipulation.
“Who is the community? Its not a straightforward process … in practice you may wind up with the same insiders as before.”
The ANC will launch its local government election campaign on February 27 at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in the North West. A date for the polls has yet to be set. — Sapa