By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
From L-R: ANC Free State interim provincial committee convenor Mxolisi Dukwana, ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe and the party’s NEC member David Mahlobo at the ANC Free State provincial conference at Imvelo Safari Lodge outside Mangaung. Picture: Nigel Sibanda.
The African National Congress (ANC’s) national chairperson Gwede Mantashe says decisions of the party’s Free State leadership will always be challenged in the courts because provincial members are ill-disciplined.
This comes after the registration for the ninth provincial elective conference in Bloemfontein was temporarily halted on Friday, after a group of party members disrupted the process.
The delegates are expected to elect their new leaders after several postponements last year due to legal wrangling.
The Free State, along with the Western Cape, were the only two that could not convene their conferences before the elective conference in December.
He made the revelations while addressing the ANC’s 9th Free State elective conference on Saturday.
Mantashe says delegates have a collective duty to resolve their differences. He has also expressed concern that the Thabo Mofutsanyana, Fezile Dabi and Xariep regions are yet to convene their conferences.
At least 667 delegates from 242 branches are attending the conference.
He added that the disruptions and actions of the members on the ground that resulted in six people being arrested and numerous people being injured were reflective of poor leadership.
“When I was coming here, I identified an inherent risk, which is now a culture here in this province, that of people who believe that it is better when there is no ANC in the province.
“Any attempt to rebuild the ANC is challenged either in the courts or through disrupting ANC events by such people and we must guard against comrades who are hellbent on making sure that there are leaders who want to ensure that at all costs that there is no ANC in this province,” said Mantashe.
Mantashe said that the duty of the members is to save the party. He says ANC members in the Free State are duty-bound to work closely with the national leadership in addressing their disputes.
He said they will deploy national executive committee members to the Free State.
“It is the duty of ANC members comrades and activists to save the ANC at all levels. At all levels you will save the ANC in the Free State. You are not going to ask for any national persons to save you. We will deploy ANC members to the province. Those NEC members will only complement your work. Now between June and July we visited all the regions in the Free State all five of them. And we discovered that at the time there was not single branch that was in good standing.”
Mantashe said the newly elected provincial executive (PEC) should focus on three key areas when they emerge from this elective conference.
“The PEC must urgently revisit the municipality demarcation and ensure that it makes sense and is not only just a task-ticking exercise as was currently the case.
“Number two, we must address the issue that in the Free State, there is no municipality that has a clean audit. It’s this province and the North West that have zero clean audits,” said Mantashe.
He added that the province should “access the capacity of the province fiscus and address the leakage of the state resources”.
Mantashe meanwhile believes there is a calculated plan to make sure that the ailing power utility, Eskom, is not placed under his custodianship.
Taking the opportunity to take a swipe at his own party’s national executive committee, Mantashe said the move was meant to appease liberals who want the country to reduce carbon emissions at the cost of citizens who must wallow in the darkness and other challenges created by not having electricity.
Mantashe said internally the ANC was now seeking to work around its own conference resolution that said Eskom should now be placed under the custodian of his ministry of mineral resources and energy.
This, according to the visibly aggrieved Mantashe, would be done by splitting the department into two – that of mineral resources and another entity separate to this, overseeing energy.
“Within the ANC there is a new debate that says energy and mining must be split. They will split energy from my department [of mineral resources and energy] then say they are taking Eskom to energy in terms of the resolution from the conference of the ANC,” said Mantashe.
He added that such a decision was being taken to “appease both sides” – those demanding the reduction of carbon emissions, while ensuring that national conference resolutions would be fulfilled in the process.
Mantashe reiterated that an individual who is a “greenie [supporter of green energy]” would then be placed to oversee this new standalone Department of Energy.
“What they are going to do – take a person who favours greenies [green energy] and ask him to run energy – but this won’t resolve the load-shedding crisis,” said the minister.
While the ANC has discussed the energy crisis internally, with opposition parties and other sectors, the party and the president have yet to address the nation on the state’s plan to resolve the escalating load shedding crisis.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to close the conference on Sunday.