ANC backs off on public poll for candidates

The Eastern Cape ANC has accused its rivals of manipulating its nomination process to undermine its candidates.

A few months ago the ANC announced it would subject its candidates for the upcoming local government elections to scrutiny at public meetings across the country. However, the provincial ANC now says its rivals organise their own supporters to lobby for different candidates at these gatherings.

The process starts with a branch general meeting where four names are elected and ranked by popularity.

The branch’s own list committee scrutinises the profiles of the candidates before parading them at public meetings within each ward.

ANC provincial secretary Oscar Mabuyane said all they were hoping the public would do was ask all the questions they want answered by each candidate, and in cases where a candidate has a criminal record, alert the list committee.

“In cases where the community had a different person in mind, they must say so. We don’t care whether that person is an ANC member, but at least he or she must be an ANC supporter.

“The list committee includes those concerns in its report and informs the regional list committee.”

Mabuyane said they had observed that people who failed to make the cut in the branch meeting then attended the public meeting to lobby support from outside.

“During this lobbying, opposition parties chip in and push their own people to divide members of the branch.

“We have issued a memorandum to all our branches to give them guidelines on how the process of nominating should be conducted.

“We are saying no voting should be entertained at these public meetings because the results divide our own members.”

In one case in the ANC’s Ward 1 in the Buffalo City Metro, a candidate who was second best at branch level, secured the highest number of votes during a public meeting last weekend.

“We decided to issue these guidelines to try and avoid further flouting of ANC guidelines by people who want to push their own interest. We can’t allow this transparent process to be hijacked by our rivals but we are not going to do away with subjecting our ward candidates to public scrutiny at the same time.

“An ANC leader is there to lead a community, so that community has to scrutinise his or her credentials,” said Mabuyane.

In a race against time, the party also has to deal with the credentials of screening committees. One can only serve on a screening committee after being an ANC member for at least 10 years.

The party, especially in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and Mnquma, saw hundreds of members leaving in 2008/9 to join COPE. This was after the ANC recalled then president Thabo Mbeki eight months after he lost to Jacob Zuma at the watershed Polokwane conference in December 2007.

Mabuyane said: “Those who for one reason or the other left the ANC and interrupted their long service cannot be allowed to serve in these committees.

“The rule is clear, one has to have an unbroken 10-year service.”

He said inclusion of those who did not meet this requirement had so far resulted in several unnecessary disputes. “We have included these guidelines in a memo we distributed to all our regions,” said Mabuyane.