By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) is continuing its 113th anniversary celebrations with a presidential gala dinner in Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) on Friday evening.
The event at the CTICC, is a continuation of the party’s fundraising efforts as the party struggles to fund its activities.
The gala dinner follows Thursday’s sold-out fundraising golf day event at the Rondebosch Golf Club.
The ANC’s celebrations started with an annual colloquium convened by the party’s Progressive Business Forum (PBF).
Treasurer-general, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, said that the business sector was not always easy to reach and the gala dinner would go a long way in reaching out to them.
Ramokgopa spoke before President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address in Cape Town on Friday evening ahead of the culmination of its 113th birthday celebrations in Khayelitsha on Saturday.
“We’ve gone beyond just fundraising. Fundraising is just but one of the outcomes. The main focus is to reach out to sectors and now we will be reaching through this presidential gala dinner to a sector that is hard to reach during our mass mobilisation and door-to-door.”
The gala event is part of the anniversary celebrations which will culminate at he January 8 statement by the president.
Ramaphosa said the party will use the January 8 celebrations to reflect on the party’s setback in the 2024 national and provincial elections and how it can claw back its traditional support.
He said, the party will have to devise means to reclaim lost ground and reposition the party as the people’s hope.
“We will also speak to the reasons why we suffered the electoral setback and what the ANC needs to claim back the ground and how we can ensure that the ANC regains the trust and the confidence of our people.
We have always said that the strength of the ANC lies in its footprint in every ward throughout the country and even as we have gone around here the Western Cape, we have seen that the people still have that love affair with the ANC.”
Ramaphosa also said it would address issues of concern to people and outline the reasons the ANC holds the firm view that the National Democratic Revolution is incomplete.
“We need to intensify the execution of the National Democratic Revolution. We have yet to attain the vision that has been set out in the Freedom Charter as South Africa to ensure that, indeed, we bring about prosperity in our country. All our people are yet to share in the wealth of our country. And the quest that continues to be articulated by our people broadly, but that is more sharply also articulated by the young people in our country,” he said.
He said the ANC will reiterate its commitment to continue with the process of driving inclusive growth that will lead to the transformation of the economy as well as the various institutions of the economy.
“As such, inclusive growth must benefit all South Africans, but in particular, the women of our country, the young people and the marginalised, vulnerable groups throughout our country. In particular, we must put before our people, concrete and targeted measures to address the challenge of unemployment, but we must also focus on how we empower young people, to prepare them for the world of work, to focus on broadening access to education, as well as enhancing quality education and strengthening skills development and expand enrolment in areas demanded by the evolving labour market laws such as Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela Act).
“The Bela law is aimed at ensuring that we improve our education system, and we insist that indeed, that law, the Bela Act, is going to be implemented — whether people like it or not, it is going to happen, “he said.
He also assured the business elite who have been against the implementation of the National Health Insurance Act that it would be implemented with the aim to provide universal access and quality health care that is free at the point of service.