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ANC must tolerate dissent, expulsion should be the last resort: Zizi Kodwa

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 Zizi Kodwa, ANC national spokesperson.  Picture: Jabu Kumalo
Zizi Kodwa, ANC national spokesperson. Picture: Jabu Kumalo

ANC national executive committee member and national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa has called on the ruling party to deepen its internal democracy and tolerate different views instead of resorting to expel dissenters.

He said the strength of the ANC that allowed it to last for 104 years was due to its ability to tolerate different views.

Kodwa was speaking today during the Nelson Mandela regional consultative conference held at the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium in Port Elizabeth. The conference was meant to assess the state of the organisation after it lost the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro to its rivals, the Democratic Alliance, last month and to chart a way towards a regional elective congress later this year and consolidate lost ground.

“In political terms there is something called dissent ... in a political organisation you do not expel dissent. It’s not like it is a body. You can expel a leader of a dissent, somebody who represents that dissent view. But you must know that it’s a view. You expel one member another one emerges,” Kodwa said.

Addressing more than 200 delegates, he said dissent should be defeated politically.

“It must not be easy to expel someone from the organisation. It must not to be easy to expel just one person. Because one person matters in the organisation. For example Cosatu sat and we could see [as the national executive committee] that its general secretary [Zwelinzima Vavi] was going to be expelled because he had transgressed all rules in the federation’s code of conduct.

“But politically as the ANC we advised Cosatu quietly that they should not expel Vavi and to find a way politically and so on. The [central executive committee] of Cosatu sat. They expelled Vavi. Where is Cosatu today,” asked Kodwa in reference to the troubled federation’s current turmoil.

Kodwa said the expulsion of members in the party cost the organisation because some expelled individuals would form their organisations and take away from the ANC’s membership.

Vavi is already working with former affiliates of Cosatu to form a new federation.

Former ANC Youth League president Julius Malema formed the Economic Freedom Fighters after he was expelled from the ANC in 2012.

Without mentioning Malema by name, Kodwa said though they did not promote ill-discipline in the organisation, expelling someone should be the last resort and that it should be people who were “beyond repair” who were expelled.

He said one of the debates taking place nationally in provinces in the wake of the recent local government elections was the next national elective conference of the ANC.

He said next year’s conference would not be held under normal circumstances and it should be used to unite the party.

“The reasons for that debate is because the past two conferences [Polokwane in 2007 and Mangaung in 2012] have not been able to unite the party. In fact what we have seen after the 2007 conference is a lot of offspring coming out of the ANC and that has weakened the social base of the ANC.

“We are getting smaller bit by bit because everybody coming out of the ANC does not find people outside but takes a chunk from the ANC members. That is why the issue about carelessly expelling anybody in the ANC we must take that into account. We must learn from our own mistakes whether we want another offspring to come out of the ANC at this stage,” Kodwa said.

He said tough decisions had to be taken to unite the ANC even if they would not be liked by individuals – the decisions had to be good for the organisation.

Later in an interview with City Press, Kodwa said the decision to expel Vavi and Cosatu’s former president Willie Madisha, who later joined Cope, were not wrong. He added that the ANC also did not regret its decision to expel Malema.

“Even the expulsion of Julius ... we don’t regret that decision. But the question for us is what are the lessons? Because as they leave they leave with a part of the ANC. What is the impact of that in the ANC, that is the point we are making ... We must tolerate dissent and not think that it is ill-discipline and think of expulsion as the first thing,” Kodwa said.

Tomorrow, party stalwart and former president Kgalema Motlanthe will address the conference delegates on organisational renewal and factionalism. Motlanthe is one of the few ANC leaders who were against Malema’s expulsion from the ANC.

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