Johannesburg – Former ANC president Thabo Mbeki is on a three-day trip in the faction-ridden Free State province in an effort to foster unity, renewal and rebuilding the party.
Mbeki’s visit is on the invitation of the Provincial Interim Committee.
On Friday Mbeki called for the overhaul, audit and vetting of the ANC’s entire membership as one of the solutions needed to bring about change in the party.
Mbeki was last in the Free State in 2007 before the party’s 52nd national conference where he failed to retain his presidency, leading to former ANC president Jacob Zuma taking over as president.
Mbeki is today engaged in a closed session symposium with ANC leaders in the province at a hall in Mangaung.
Mbeki and the leadership is to discuss what has gone wrong in the ANC in the Free State, as well as solutions ahead of the 55th national congress.
Interim provincial committee deputy coordinator Polediso Motsoeneng said they are happy with the critical engagement in the past two days.
“Our observation has been that at least there are some milestones we have reached, of course informed by the wisdom of the former president in defining the kind of organisation we belong to, and what are the value systems that we have to uphold. How do we contribute to the agenda of renewing the ANC as characterised by 54th national congress which said it must be an urgent priority for us to save an ailing organisation from its decay,” said Motsoeneng.
He said from Mbeki’s contribution, there were two questions that he posed to the IPC, namely; what kind of renewed ANC do we envisage, and what needs to be done to achieve that renewal.
Motsoeneng said these were extremely complex questions, but with the wisdom and advice from Mbeki in the past two days, they would be in a position to respond to such questions.
It is still not clear when the ANC Free State will have its provincial conference.
“We still having to ensure that we have properly constituted structures, and if we can be able to say, indeed we are ready to renew the ANC because it will not be a useful exercise for us to just gallop to the conference where we would get the same outcome, which does not sustain the very same existence of the organisation.
“Our task is to be a qualitative structure of the ANC with quality membership that at least understands their dream and their responsibilities in terms of taking forward what the ANC stands for,” Motsoeneng said.
IPC member Mathabo Leeto said for the past two days members of the IPC and the alliance were able to get an opportunity to unpack the unity and the renewal of the ANC, and also identify factors that influence divisions in the movement.
“In my view we cannot renew the ANC if we cannot renew ourselves as individual members and individual leaders. Our renewal should be based on respecting and upholding the constitution of the ANC.
“The other issue that has been identified as a challenge is insufficient political education. The ANC took a resolution that new members who are recruited in the ANC should be on probation for six months and they should be taken through political education, and that is not happening. Audits must be done, it should not be about auditing numbers but we must also audit the performance of that branch in terms of convening monthly meetings, programmes in the community of the branch,” she said.
Political Bureau
