Simon Nare
ANC elections head Mdumiseni Ntuli has predicted that the party will bounce and win the majority vote contrary to popular belief that the party doesn’t learn and has no comebacks.
Ntuli, talking to journalists on the sidelines of the party’s National Executive Committee meeting at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg outside Johannesburg, said for the first time the party received just under 50% at the last national elections and this required the party to adjust and make certain changes.
He added that the new position that the party finds itself in, requires it to do business in other ways and prove wrong those who believe that it can never learn.
“There is a point that has been made on several occasions that the ANC doesn’t know how to come back. And that statement is on the assumption that the ANC doesn’t learn and even today we have not acquired certain lessons that must help us to come back.
“We are still in the meeting of the national executive committee, my own view and my own sense is that we have all understood that for the first time the ANC is less than 50% and it is a totally new situation and requires that we make certain changes in how we conduct business,” said Ntuli.
Ntuli pointed out that one identified area so far in the NEC meeting is that for some time now there has been a steady decline of activism in the movement which connected the party’s structures with its support base.
He said the NEC meeting has acknowledged that the activism must be revived in the structures because that is what connected the people with the movement.
The party’s elections head acknowledged that the party embarked on the election campaign at a time when there was load shedding across the country and that did not bode well for the party.
Ntuli said at that time the mood and attitude towards the ANC during the dark load shedding days ahead of the elections was negative and difficult.
ANC first deputy general secretary Nomvula Mokonyane said the meeting was discussing that the party should not be a carcass in their lifetime and the renewal project must be real and not subjective and the recruitment of new members should go with political education.
Mokonyane said the tradition of the party where it would be preoccupied with elections of internal structures must be something of the past and the party’s branches must not be measured by its 100 members but by its programs in the community.
“The call for the ANC activist-led is the right call now so that we don’t only go door-to-door three months before the elections,” she said.
Mokonyane also squashed circulating rumours that DA’s federal chairperson Helen Zille was running Luthuli House after she dropped a bombshell two days ago that the “Government of National Unity” was in fact a grand coalition between the ANC and the DA.
“Zille is not in charge of Luthuli House, she can’t. Luthuli House is the house of the ANC. Who leads the GNU? The GNU is led by the ANC. The ANC has invited everybody. We refuse to be put together with the DA. We were conscious of the fact that we have a bigger constituency that is represented through parliament and that is what we are working on,” said Mokonyane.
INSIDE POLITICS
