ANC NEC member and presidential hopeful Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has decried the weakness of ANC branches in the past five years.
JOHANNESBURG – ANC NEC member and presidential hopeful Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has decried the weakness of ANC branches in the past five years.
She said the work of the ANC in bringing about service delivery and change in the lives of South Africans has been hampered by the weakened ANC branches and other structures of the ruling party. Some of these include the disbanding of the ANC Youth League and the “malfunctioning” ANC Women’s League.
The former AU chairperson spoke to Independent Media during a visit this week. She said if she is elected president of the ANC at the party’s December elective conference, the first thing she would do is work towards strengthening the ANC’s branches, which she said were the basic unit of the governing party.
“We are in deep trouble as the ANC, as we currently do not have an elected league who have the proper mandate since we are led by interim structures. It has been more than 10 years without a functioning ANC Youth League. It has been 10 years without the league, where the youth should be strengthening the ANC, just like the women’s league has a role to strengthen the ANC. Those are some of the things I want to see being done,” she said.
Dlamini Zuma added that without well-functioning branches, the ANC has become ill-equipped to attend to the matters of the country’s population and the needs of the country’s ordinary citizens, who would like to see the ANC as a community-based organisation that is responsive to the issues on the ground. She said at the moment branches are only active when it is time for elections or when there is a conference coming up.
“These days, branches become active during elections and when there are conferences, which is why we are weak as the ANC. If branches are weak, our regions will be weak, and our provinces will also be weak. We need to go back into strengthen the basic unit of the ANC, which is our branches. If the basic unit of the ruling party is strong, people will begin to trust the ANC. I think we have lost that trust, and we need to go back to it,” she said.
She added that there was a time when South Africans were inspired by an ANC community leader and would want their children to join the ANC because being part of it meant a lot to the people of this country. She stated that this was no longer the case, adding that there was no money in being an ANC leader back then.
“When I joined the ANC, there was no money. Those days there was no money in the ANC but the promise of prison or even death … Parents would see an ANC leader in the community and say: “I wish my son or my daughter would join the ANC and become an active member,” she said.
Dlamini Zuma’s sentiments on the weakness of the ANC were echoed by another NEC member, Nomvula Mokonyane, who on the weekend said the party was at its weakest in its history.
Mokonyane was speaking in Nasrec, Johannesburg, on Friday, ahead of the ANC’s first physical NEC meeting in more than two years.
“As I have said, we have got members of the ANC who have survived one of the most difficult moments, such as the pandemic, the shutdown, and the collapse of all branches of the ANC. But it was individual members who have responded and said what’s missing is this NEC,” Mokonyane said.
