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The governing party once again started a new year with renewed calls to heal the divisions within the organisation and its affiliate structures, as President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the party’s January 8 statement this weekend in Kimberley, Northern Cape.
Ramaphosa told those gathered to celebrate the party’s 108th birthday yesterday at Tafel Lager Park that continued factional activity would this year be defeated “through a cohesive programme of action that places the needs and interests of the people above all other interests”.
Internal divisions have been blamed for the ANC losing power in key metros, including Johannesburg and Tshwane in Gauteng, as well as Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape and several other smaller municipalities across the country during the 2016 municipal elections.
The ANC Women’s League, ANC Youth League and ANC Veterans’ League also suffered a loss in stature as a result of infighting, which is often triggered by the mother body’s elective campaign and differences over leadership preferences.
Descending on the Northern Cape for the celebrations, party leadership found that cracks still existed in the province along factional lines, with ANC members still ascribing to either the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma or Ramaphosa camps that went into the party’s presidential race in 2017.
Party leaders, including Ramaphosa and ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile, took every opportunity during their week-long activities in and around Kimberley to call for unity among party members.
Mashatile said it was his “view that we are doing very well. The top six are working together.
“This story that the president is pulling this way and [secretary-general Ace Magashule] is pulling [the other way] is not true. It’s information which people are peddling.
“We are very focused on the programme of unity; we are working as a team; we are pulling our structures together. That’s why you see even the theme is unity – it is the overriding factor.”
Ramaphosa said: “The ANC held its 54th conference in 2017 and the delegates made a clear resolution that the party must renew itself and it must be united. This is precisely what we have embarked on to get rid of factionalism within our ranks and to ensure that the ANC is the leader of society once again.”
He added that the party was in the process of renewing itself “so that we can once again be the ANC that subscribed to the principles and values of integrity that Solomon Plaatje and many other leaders subscribed to”.
The Sol Plaatje Local Municipality in the Northern Cape has been marred by divisions, with executive mayor Patrick Mabilo last year “proposing” he be replaced by ANC councillor Ronney Morwe, who is said to be in the Dlamini-Zuma camp.
City Press has been told that it was only Mabilo’s “close relationship with Northern Cape Premier Zamani Saul that saved him”.
Mabilo was a no-show at the party’s biggest ceremony of the week at Mayibuye Community Centre on Tuesday, where Ramaphosa, Saul and ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte presided over a cake-cutting ceremony.
The centre is in Mabilo’s municipality and those who spoke to City Press said his absence was “a telling sign that the disgruntled mayor is on his way out”.
Magashule said on Thursday in Jan Kempdorp – which is part of the Phokwane Local Municipality – where a briefing session with councillors was marred by allegations of corruption and where the secretary-general later witnessed a physical fight among local party leaders – that party problems often start at leadership level and cascade down.
“We have to ensure that we unite and renew the ANC. It’s a programme on its own and I think we are succeeding at national level. We have to succeed on the ground,” said Magashule on the campaign trail in the troubled local municipality, which has been placed under administration by the province mainly because of infighting among ANC councillors.
An optimistic Magashule said the unity programme was beginning to bear fruit at a national level.
“It is working now. It is working in the Western Cape and in KwaZulu-Natal. It is coming to other provinces such as North West, and now we are here [in the Northern Cape]. We are going to make it happen.”
Magashule says the ANC must strive to bring the factions together and make them understand that it is not about them.
“We educate first and make people understand,” he said, warning that the ANC would lose power if it did not manage internal political wrangling with caution.
He reckons that, “when the ANC is divided, every level of society is divided”.
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