The African National Congress (ANC)’s National Executive Committee (NEC) still wants the Reserve Bank to be nationalised, but quickly added that this position will not affect the institution’s mandate, senior party officials said Tuesday.
“Our position on the nationalisation of the reserve bank has not changed. If you talk about sovereignty of that bank, belonging to the people, is one and the same thing,” ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule told a media briefing following the weekend NEC meeting.
ANC Deputy Secretary General Jessie Duarte added that the mandate of the South African Reserve Bank would not change if the bank was nationalised.
Magashule said the NEC did not discuss former president Jacob Zuma’s ‘spy claims’ at the public inquiry into state capture. “We have never discussed such a matter. The ANC discussed and focused on matters affecting South Africans [such as] unemployment, gender-based violence.”
Zuma accused former Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi and former Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda of being apartheid spies while testifying at the state capture commission of inquiry earlier in July.
On the Hanekom matter, Magashule said: “We have referred the matter to officials for processing. Every agenda, every item discussed, we take things we have processed to the officials of the ANC.”
The ANC expressed concern over the state of the economy amid the latest shock figures of the increasing unemployment crisis.
“We woke up this morning to the announcement that the official unemployment rate has risen to 29%. This continued to be the most important issue facing our nation.”
Magashule said the NEC called on social partners including business to implement the 2018 job summit agreement, which included a moratorium on retrenchments in the public service as well as a commitment from business not to arbitrarily cut jobs.
The NEC also agreed to disband the ANCYL and appointed a task team to oversee the League and make preparations for conference no later than February 2020.
