African National Congress (ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa says despite the many challenges facing the governing party and the country, significant gains have been made over the past year. He was speaking at the ANC Presidential Gala Dinner at the Johannesburg Expo Centre on Thursday night.
The party’s 55th National Conference is expected to start on Friday. The event was attended by the party’s top officials, several ANC NEC members and representatives from fraternal parties including Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF, MPLA of Angola and CCM of Tanzania among others.
Ramaphosa says after losing two-million jobs during COVID-19 and the devastation of the July unrest last year, the country is on a growth path.
Hopes for unity at National Conference
ANC leaders say they are hopeful that the 55th National Conference will foster unity within the party. The conference takes place amid growing turbulence within the party. The governing party is expected to reflect on the past five years and elect a new leadership.
The election will be informed by delegates’ choices of who can steer the party in the right direction. But it also comes at a time when the party is marred by challenges and worsening disunity.
This despite the ANC declaring 2022 the year of unity and renewal.
Treasurer-General and Acting Secretary-General of the party, Paul Mashatile, is hopeful that the conference will eradicate divisions.
“We’re going to have a good conference. We are going to try and get out of that conference united, we want to have a proper conference that is focused on policy discussions. Yes, leadership is important but we must not be derailed from the important things that are affecting our people so I’m expecting that we will come out of that conference stronger, more united and focusing on the issues that we need to address in our communities.”
Rifts continue ahead of ANC’s National Conference
The long-standing relationship between the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), and the South African Communist Party (SACP) will come under the spotlight at the ANC’s 55th National Conference.
In recent years, the tripartite alliance has shown cracks as the government and labour have failed to reach a consensus on a number of issues involving public sector workers.
The government’s failure to honour part of its three-year wage agreement and the recent deadlock on the public sector wage negotiations have widened the divisions among the alliance partners. This pushed some Cosatu unions to call for the federation to support the SACP if the party decides to contest the 2024 national elections alone.
Relations between Cosatu, ANC, SACP under the spotlight:
Outstanding issues
Cosatu says there are a lot of issues that have been outstanding that they would like to see come under the spotlight at the conference amongst which are the issues of the unilateral implementation of a 3% wage increase and the reconfiguration of the alliance.
“We would like the ANC to discuss a number of issues affecting the workers in particular the economic crisis we are facing in this country. Issues discussed at the level of ETC where Cosatu and SACP have input on a number of economic issues also raised at the ANC policy conference around the social compact that will deal with a lot of issues including that of service delivery. The ANC must come up with decisive resolutions around dealing with issues of the SOEs,” says Cosatu General Secretary Solly Phetoe.
It was at that Cosatu congress where the SACP once again raised their dissatisfaction with the state of the alliance, threatening to contest the 2024 national elections alone.
SACP’s General Secretary Solly Mapaila says the SACP is ready to contest the elections, it’s just a matter of engagement. “Things have not been well for the alliance, and we’ve been calling for a reconfiguration. We’ve raised issues that still need to be discussed with our alliance partners but never say we are not ready. We work on the revolutionary agenda that still need to be realised if properly implemented.”
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