Publications
Partners
Pretoria - The ANC is in the process of finalising its candidate lists for this year's local government elections.
The party's national list conference started on Friday in Irene, Pretoria ahead of a national executive committee meeting and continued on Saturday.
- Are you registered to vote? For registration details, live election results and more, download our Elections App for Android or iOS now!
Its aim is to finalise the names of the party's mayoral and councillor candidates for the August 3 local government elections.
"The list conference is going OK. We starting on the second day now we should be done with the list conference today and start with the NEC conference later today," national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa said on Saturday.
The conference was attended by the provincial list committees, alliance partners and the entire NEC. The NEC will then ratify the final list of candidates for the party.
"We have guidelines, so the list conference must look at what comes from [each] province, to what extent are we following the guidelines, to what extent are we following policy provisions... have we met targets," Kodwa said, explaining the process.
The ANC, for the first time, has decided to announce its mayoral candidates ahead of the elections.
It was not clear exactly when this would happen, but it would happen early enough to allow the candidates to campaign, secretary general Gwede Mantashe said earlier this week.
However, it was likely that only the mayoral candidates for the metros and district municipalities would be announced.
This year's elections will see a fight for the country's major metros. Opposition parties have vowed to take control of Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, and Nelson Mandela Bay from the ANC.
At this weekend's NEC meeting a report on the allegations of state capture is expected to be tabled.
However, Kodwa on Saturday said the meeting would only start later in the day and the agenda had not been tabled yet.
In March, Mantashe said the NEC had instructed officials and the national working committee to investigate allegations that the politically-connected Gupta family, who are said to have close ties with President Jacob Zuma, his family and other ANC leaders, were influencing Cabinet appointments.
The ANC had called on members with information to come forward.
