The ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal Task Team Coordinator, Sihle Zikalala, says unity in the ANC should not be based on arrangements to accommodate each other, but it is about allowing all people to join the organisation freely and accommodate diverse views.
Zikalala was addressing delegates at the KwaDukuza Regional Conference in Chakas Rock near Ballito north of Durban on Saturday.
The conference was attended by some NEC members, including Edna Molewa, Dakota Lekgoete and some Provincial Task Team members including, Peggy Nkonyeni and Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
The KwaDukuza conference was supposed to have been held in September last year, but was put on ice as the ANC was preparing for the national conference.
According to Zikalala people must feel free to join the organisation.
He says, “Unity in the ANC will be reflected by allowing all people to join the ANC, allowing all people to participate in the programs of the ANC, allowing members of the ANC to express their views, but the views of the ANC are expressed where? In the ANC. If we go as members of the ANC and debate issues of the ANC on facebook that does not unite the ANC. If there is a person who want to join the ANC and that person is denied to join, that does not unite the ANC.”
He has dismissed reports the party in the province is waging a campaign to discredit President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Zikalala the province is fully behind the collective ANC national leadership elected at Nasrec last year.
“We emerge from the national conference united behind the elected leadership of the ANC. We are happy that the conference did not elect a faction, it elected the leadership under one president, Cyril Ramaphosa. We are united in support of the leadership elected. I’m saying this because there are those who continue to say KZN is mobilising against the national leadership. I hear some of the national leadership saying so, we are not going to respond to them, but we will seek engagement with them inside the structures of the ANC. We remain vigilant as Tambo told us, Oliver Tambo once said beware of the wage driver a man with a poisonous tongue.”
Meanwhile, outgoing KwaDukuza Regional Chairperson Ricardo Mthembu says it is high time that the party do some introspection to see if internal divisions in the party is not the work of a third force.
He says infighting in the organisation makes one suspicious that the ANC may be infiltrated.
“What causes divisions among us? Are we alone in the organisation? Because of enemies, comrades they are united in dividing and bringing down the ANC? Are we alone? Are we capable as cadres and delegates here to analyse when we are infiltrated as the ANC. We can’t have endless divisions in the organisation. Are we able to understand people who come to us and speak the language that is not the ANC language?”
The newly elected leadership will be announced on Sunday.
