Outgoing African National Congress (ANC) Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe has warned that the party is risking being reduced to a rural party.
During 2016’s municipal elections, the ruling party lost metros such as the City of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay to the Democratic Alliance (DA), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Congress of the People (COPE)-led coalitions.
Mantashe’s message to the incoming leadership is that they must genuinely and frankly confront all problems facing the party.
“We lost EC. We did better in other areas. We have Gauteng. We lost metros. That is where I see a big threat, which I mentioned when I said, we can’t afford an ANC that becomes a rural party; that talks to the heart of the economy, Gauteng, because if we decline in Gauteng we are going to be relegated into a rural party. We can’t afford that.”
“If the ANC is flat-footed in any issue, it leaves a vacuum for the leadership of society. The ANC must be able to express a view on everything. It doesn’t matter how painful it is. In the plenary, we went through all the difficult issues we are confronted with; whether it is the Nkandla case; whether it was the Public Protector report; whether it was the Con-Court judgement.”
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