Former ANC President Jacob Zuma has accused the current ANC leadership of having failed to implement the resolutions from the party’s 2017 national conference at Nasrec. Zuma was speaking at a celebration of his 79th birthday organised by the youth wing of the South African National Civic Organisation in Umhlanga, north of Durban.
Zuma called on ANC branches not to be silent if elected leaders derail or take decisions that are contrary to party resolutions.
“During the previous ANC national conference, we took resolutions as usual, but they are not being implemented. Why branches are quiet when leadership is not implementing conference resolutions? In fact, leadership must respect and be afraid of branches, because branches have the final say and the ones who take final decisions,” he said.
The former president says some members who are vocal about radical economic transformation have become a target of purging.
“There is a resolution we took during the national conference, the Radical Economic Transformation. Comrades, who were part of the conference and those who were not in the conference, like this resolution, because this resolution talks about changing and improving people’s lives.
But instead, people who are vocal about this resolution are not being a target of those in the leadership. The ANC now wants to expel those talking and popularising this resolution. Why ANC (branches) are silence when the leadership is doing this?”
Zuma also talked about the problem of membership gatekeeping and buying votes during party conferences.
“Even the branch general meetings that have started, I think they are being manipulated, because leadership they use these branch general meetings not to grow the ANC, but to manipulate the process to favour certain individuals,” he said.
Zuma would not answer questions about his contempt of court case in the Constitutional Court and the withdrawal of his legal team from his corruption case.
