The ruling party has to brace itself for difficult elections, and it has to take the pain.
This advice came from cabinet minister and ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, who addressed the party’s Eastern Cape provincial executive committee lekgotla in East London on Sunday.
Motsoaledi, who provided the gathering with input from the party’s national structure, said the ANC needed introspection and should conduct “surgery” without taking pain-prevention medicine so that it could feel the agony.
“At moments like this, where we come together as the ANC, especially when our country is going through a very painful period, we, as the movement, need to do introspection.
“We are going through a painful period, we all know that; I do not have to elaborate,” Motsoaledi said.
He warned the ANC to prepare for its most challenging elections yet.
“We are faced with perhaps the most difficult elections we have had since the dawn of democracy, with [competition from] a lot of splinter parties; in the main from the ANC, not from other political parties.”
He used the metaphor of surgery to describe what was needed to heal the party.
“Let’s today put ourselves through an operation. We want to see what is inside; we want to see what has gone wrong, but let’s do that without an anaesthetic.
“Let’s look inside ourselves and see all the things and what has actually gone wrong,” he said.
Speaking to the Daily Dispatch on the sidelines of the two-day event at the Osner Hotel, ANC provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi echoed these sentiments, saying that winning the elections would not be easy.
“We have many challenges as the party, such as the revelations at the state capture commission of inquiry.
“As the ANC we do admit our sins so that we can cleanse ourselves.
“So at the moment we are busy with the cleansing and also [building] unity of the people of this country. We are in the process of renewal with the assistance of these commissions of inquiry,” he said.
Addressing the lekgotla, ANC provincial chairman Oscar Mabuyane sent a scathing warning to those engaged in corrupt activities, saying that the party should deal with corruption from the onset.
“Real or perceived, when our people hear us being implicated in corruption, they view those allegations against the roads, electricity, clinics, schools and other service delivery needs that they could have received.”
Mabuyane also warned against ANC deployees in government not meeting targets and performing poorly on service delivery.
“The time has arrived that the monitoring and evaluation of the ANC must be implemented on deployees of the ANC.
“If you do not meet targets, you cannot hide behind poor performance. We cannot celebrate the mediocre at the expense of our people. That must come to an end or else we will be burying the ANC alive,” Mabuyane said.
The ANC had to “objectively” assess its performance over the past term, and identify key intervention priorities between now and the end of the fifth term.
“We must also highlight successes of the work done by comrades deployed to government, so that we sustain them going forward.”
The sombre briefing came in the wake of startling revelations about corruption heard by several commissions of inquiry which are currently sitting...