President Jacob Zuma.
"We gather here to do this important thing; to launch the volunteer core for us to be even more stronger than we are," Zuma said in Johannesburg on Sunday.
"The volunteers of the ANC came at a particular time and they were seen as an important component of the organisation." Zuma was speaking at the Gauteng ANC's launch of its Moses Kotane volunteer brigades ahead of the 2014 national elections.
The president gave the 6 000 volunteers a brief history of how the volunteer core came to be in the party, dating back to the 1940s.
He said volunteers were not like ordinary ANC members. "A core of comrades who are called volunteers are expected to behave in a certain way. There must be discipline, but as a body [volunteers] must also help to ensure that generally there is discipline within the ANC."
He said volunteers were the lifeblood of the ANC.
Volunteering allowed ANC members to participate in the party's programmes and record what they had done.
"It also helps the leadership to identify the cadres that are able to do everything that the organisation asks them to," said Zuma. – Sapa