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There are no names yet for the ANC’s mayoral candidates in key municipalities like Tshwane, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay metro as the party waits for the affected regional and provincial leaders to find consensus.
The final registration of councillor candidates ahead of the upcoming municipal elections on August 3 closes on Thursday.
Reporting on the outcomes of the ANC’s national list conference and the national executive committee meeting last weekend, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said at a media briefing in Luthuli House in Johannesburg that the decision on mayoral candidates could be ready in the next two weeks.
This week Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters said they would only reveal the names of their mayoral candidates after the August 3 elections, leaving the Democratic Alliance as the only party whose candidates had been confirmed.
Mantashe said the ANC was “justifiably proud” of the role communities played in the development of its candidates list.
“No other party in South Africa can legitimately claim the same extent of transparency and inclusiveness in the selection of candidates,” he said.
The involvement of communities in the party’s councillor selection process was an attempt to shove up the credibility of candidates. However, in some branches and regions the process was marred by incidents of violence and intimidation, threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the process.
Mantashe said the national executive committee “denounced in the strongest possible terms the incidences of violence that would have erupted in some areas during the candidate selection process”.
The committee called for the relevant structures to act decisively in those instances, he said.
He also had a word of caution for those candidates who had been successfully nominated.
“They will no doubt know that deployment, should they be elected, is an honour and a privilege. It can be withdrawn or changed at any time the ANC decides,” he said.
During the launch of the ANC’s 2016 municipal elections manifesto in Nelson Mandela Bay metro in April, President Jacob Zuma said that “all councillors will be required to sign performance and accountability agreements”, which were meant to enable the party to deal swiftly with wayward councillors.
At its national conference in Mangaung in 2012 the ANC spoke against the threat of careerism within its ranks. The meeting said that the phenomenon, including crass materialism, undermined the moral fibre of the ANC and subsequently its ability to effectively lead society.
