The ruling party has recorded a massive and unprecedented plummet in membership.
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SOUTH Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has launched a mobile phone application to increase engagements with delegates at the fourth National General Council (NGC). The president revealed that the ANC’s membership had dropped to 769,870, a drop of 450,187 members.
Jacob Zuma, the ANC’s leader since December 2007, told a party policy forum in Midrand, near Johannesburg on Friday.
Analysts say Zuma himself is to blame for at least a few of the party’s dwindling support, amid a scandal over the spending of $23 million dollars of taxpayers’ money on upgrades to his private rural residence. It was later decided that the president’s assessment of the country and the organisation would be open. Questions and comments will be collated for consideration in the finalconference reports.
The ANC will not be “dictated to by the U.S.” on this matter, Mantashe said. “Our election majority has dropped over the years because a few people have become disillusioned with the party and others have abstained from elections to show their dissatisfaction”.
Zuma said the country was what it was because of the ANC.
“This leads to social distance between the organisation and the people”.
“Most ANC branches function well and we’ll agree that others are facing difficulties and need to be freed from tendencies such as manipulations and gate keeping”.
“We also need to address the purported existence of the so-called kingmakers in the ANC. There is no structure of the ANC that has been afforded the status of being a kingmaker”, Zuma said. “This notion undermines the internal democracy and authority and centrality of the branches of the ANC”.
That’s despite the fact President Jacob Zuma won the party’s Polokwane conference through such a tactic.
But ANC’s Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe has unequivocally stated that there will not be any compromise from the ANC on the Bill. He said factions were not about ideology but about spoils. “It is the self-centered cadres of the movement that makes our structures to weaken the duty to serve”, he said.
The ANC president sharply criticised members’ behaviour, especially at branch level, and warned that “negative tendencies” including what he called “systematic sowing of divisions” within the organisation were crippling the party.
These businesspeople get contracts and tenders in return, even when they have no capacity.
“The risk is that of the ANC being sold to the highest bidder, with leadership structures becoming gatherings of various business interests”.
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In his report, Mantashe said the ANC, as part of its organisational renewal, should strengthen the tri-partite alliance.
