Publications
Partners
Johannesburg – Presenting his report on the state of the organisation at the National General Council on Friday, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said, the ANC was going back to basics.
“The first thing [we discussed] was to have deep roots and connections with the people… We are raising that issue because this is the lifeblood of the ANC.
“If the ANC is getting removed from the ANC, the less confidence people have in the ANC; the more rooted we are with the people, the more confidence that people will have in the ANC.”
The second thing that the party dealt with was vibrant internal democracy on collective leadership.
Mantashe said, “This talks to two extremes, the first one is acceptance of outcomes of internal democratic processes of the ANC by the members of the ANC.
“We have seen winning groupings become arrogant and marginalise and purge the group that didn’t support it. The other extreme is a group that has lost conference continuing to mobilise destabilisation of the structures of the ANC…”
The third area, said Mantashe, was the willingness and readiness of ANC members to make sacrifices in pursuit the people as a whole.
“We [also] looked at our membership from the time of the 52nd conference. In the 52nd conference in Polokwane we has 620 000 members. In the third national general council in Durban we had 649 000 members and in the 53rd conference we had 1.2 million members. And we now have 769 000 members.
“The NGC listened to reasons on what had happened and what factors that led to that trend,” said Mantashe.
He said gatekeeping was a huge problem.
Mantashe said he was worried about people who were more concerned about the voting power than building the organisation.
About the integrity commission, Mantashe said, “We owned up to the fact that we have not implemented many of the recommendations. We have asked the general council that the integrity commission should be given a task to take decisions and bounce them off officials.
“We should be able to say to officials, because of what you are doing, you are tainting the image of the organisation, therefore step aside and there must be no long process to effect that process.
“We are hopeful that that will be endorsed.”
Mantashe said the party also discussed the state of the provinces.
