By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was booed by delegates at the ANC KwaZulu-Natal elective conference. Ramaphosa was delivering the closing address after his allies suffered a massive blow in the leadership race.
Newly elected chairperson Sboniso Duma implored the crowd not to act disorderly.
Delegates sang in support of former president Jacob Zuma as Ramaphosa entered the venue.
Duma was elected chairperson of the party’s provincial structure, which has more than 200,000 ANC members. He ousted former chairperson Sihle Zikalala who was seen as a Ramaphosa ally and remains premier of the province. Duma garnered 930 votes to Zikalala’s 665.
Ramaphosa congratulated delegates for holding such a disciplined, well-organised conference.
The ANC, Africa’s oldest political movement, has won every national election held in the continent’s most-industrialized economy since the end of White-minority rule in 1994.
It controls eight of the nation’s nine provinces. With public anger running high over a lack of basic services, rampant unemployment and poverty, the party’s control over parliament and Gauteng will both be at risk in the 2024 vote.
Ramaphosa himself is facing growing criticism about his failure to address those issues.
He drew a stinging rebuke last week from former president Thabo Mbeki for not fulfilling a February pledge to announce a program within 100 days to boost economic growth — a failure that Mbeki said risked triggering protests similar to those that swept the Arab world a decade ago.
Ramaphosa raised the issue of the country’s unemployment crisis and spoke of economic reforms to boost growth and job creation.
“All of us are hugely unhappy with the load shedding we have all been experiencing in recent weeks and this has demonstrated the need for urgent reforms. While we have embarked on several measures to increase generation of capacity, this has not been enough.”
Ramaphosa said they would soon be announcing initiatives to ensure energy security in the coming months.
Regarding the lack of progress on his social compact promise, Ramaphosa said the process has been “slow and at times quite difficult”.
“We have lived with this problem for a number of years. While we don’t have an over-arching social compact, we are making progress,” Ramaphosa said.
For radical economic transformation to be successful we need to address each of these objectives… to foster transformation and bring more black people into the economy,” Ramaphosa said.
He said differences should not allow party members to regard each other as enemies and prevent them from working with each other and that conferences should unite the party and not divide it.
KwaZulu-Natal province, home to sub-Saharan Africa’s largest container hub at the port of Durban, is the second-biggest contributor to South Africa’s country’s gross domestic product.
Warring factions have divided the party in the province, resulting in its losing the kingmaker status that propelled former President Jacob Zuma to power in 2008.
Those who want to lead the party will look to secure the province’s support in the run-up to the national conference in December. Among them is disgraced former Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, who has signaled he plans to challenge Ramaphosa and has received endorsements from some of the province’s local structures.
Chairpersons in four other provinces have backed Ramaphosa for reelection, though there’s no guarantee that their provincial structures will follow suit.