By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) confirmed that it will be holding a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting tomorrow in a bid to cement its approach to coalitions.
This comes after reports that the meeting has been postponed to Thursday amid a fallout within the NEC.
In a brief statement the party said, “The ANC dismisses any fake news attempts at dividing our NEC. We are strongly united and remain focused on using the mandate given to us by our people to build a better life for all.”
The party secured 40.1% of the votes in Wednesday’s elections, securing 159 seats in Parliament.
The ANC is committed to the formation of a government that reflects the will of the people. That is stable, and it can govern effectively,” ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said.
Parties have a two-week deadline to elect a president, and analysts said the ANC would likely need to concede to an array of demands to bring others on board for a coalition government.
The ANC said there have been no substantial negotiations with any political parties it has met as the first round of exploratory coalition talks started on Monday.
The party’s first deputy secretary-general, Nomvula Mokonyane, said the party has met the DA, IFP, EFF, Patriotic Alliance and the National Freedom Party.The ANC also reached out to uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) as it “wants to meet everyone” to move South Africa forward.
The DA on Sunday announced that it would begin talks with the ANC in an effort to block what some have described as a “doomsday coalition” between the ANC, EFF and MK Party.
But the ANC source has dismissed the coalition talks, adding there’s little appetite for a coalition with the DA.
The MK party meanwhile is calling for a rerun of the elections, insisting they would have crossed the 50% mark in KZN had it not been for what it calls “IEC vote rigging”.
The party emerged the third largest in the country, and biggest in KZN where they secured 45.35% of the votes, followed by the IFP at 18% and the ANC 16.9%.This represented a whopping drop of 37.2% for the ANC leading the party to publicly declare its humiliating defeat to MK, and conceding that former president Jacob Zuma who heads the party was a “force to be reckoned with”.
Zuma warned the IEC that it “didn’t know what his party was made of” and that it “would do something that had never happened before”: lay charges against the electoral body.
He addressed his members outside the Electoral Court sitting at the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg in the party’s leadership battle, claiming without any evidence that his newly-formed party won the 2024 national elections outright.
“We campaigned thoroughly. South Africans believed in us,” Zuma said.
The results are, however, already announced over the weekend after elections and there is no evidence that the IEC rushed the announcement.