Eastern Cape ANC treasurer Babalo Madikizela has taken a swipe at Premier Phumulo Masualle and likened him to a sheep whose provincial executive committee placed the party in financial deficit.
As a result, the party saw its provincial staff surviving on handouts from good Samaritans for most of 2016/17, while service providers such as taxi drivers and caterers shied away from providing services to the ruling party due to non-payment of accounts.
These financial woes led to embarrassment for the ANC when hosting the manifesto launch in 2016 in Port Elizabeth with a poor turnout signalling a weak ANC.
Addressing the provincial leadership on Tuesday during the party’s 107th anniversary at the provincial headquarters, Calata House in King William’s Town, the human settlements MEC said the nightmare of having to source funding at the 11th hour was a thing of the past.
He said they were seeing an improvement in donor response already because they were no longer being led by the “sheep”.
“There was an alignment at that [2017 ANC provincial elective ] conference. The lions now are led by lions. That is why we have these fruits. The ANC is being refreshed.
“We are being applauded for our proper lists conference because of the kind of leadership we now have,” he charged.
Madikizela is trusted with the party’s provincial purse – having taken over from Thandiswa Marawu, who held the position for two terms.
He stated that under Marawu, the ANC was in the red.
“When we arrived, we had to deal with the taxi industry that was owed R10m, we had spent R20m in the January 8 celebrations in 2018 and I had to come to an office with no handover. The donor base was shrinking. The former term had a business network that could not be handed over because they were contesting our election. We were all alone in that office and we had no clue how much debt the organisation had incurred,” he said.
Madikizela said the party had a turnaround strategy which resulted in the clearance of millions of rands of debt within a year.
“We paid all our debts as the province, but as big an organisation as we are, we will always have financial issues.
“We managed to swim against the tide.
“Even though we might not be liquid, we at least can manage. We were in the red, that is why we had service providers knocking at our doors and taking their cases to the media for non-payment.”
A fleet of 16 bakkies which will tour the province during its election campaigning and a well equipped war room with up to date IT systems, are some of Madikizela’s flagship projects.
“We have a well-equipped war room which will enable us to reach the masses of the province. We were left with debts, that’s why we were embarrassed by taxi owners protesting at our gates.
“We would apologise all the time because we were on a negative,” he said...