ANC summons KZN officials over poor election performance

The ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee (PEC) has been summoned to the party’s headquarters Luthuli House in Johannesburg.

It is believed that punishment for the province’s poor performance in the May general election would be revealed at the meeting.

In a short letter that The Citizen has seen, addressed to KZN ANC provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula invited the entire PEC to a meeting of the national working committee (NWC).

The meeting will held at Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg tomorrow afternoon.

ANC PEC may be disbanded

An ANC insider said the meeting was called to tell all PEC members that they would be disbanded and an interim structure would be established as punishment for its underperformance.

“This issue has been hanging for long, they will go. We were disappointed by our showing in KZN,” the insider said.

It is unprecedented for Luthuli House to ask the entire PEC to appear before the NWC, a powerful structure that makes decisions on day-to-day party matters, even though its decisions still have to be ratified by the national executive committee (NEC), even if they had already been implemented.

It is rare for the NEC to alter the decision of the NWC, which comprises representatives of party structures such as the party leagues and the top seven officials.

The first indication of possible action against KZN PEC was when Mtolo, along with ANC Gauteng chair Panyaza Lesufi, were summoned to Luthuli House last month.

The party’s top seven national officials were supposed to support Mbalula and take action to rein in Lesufi for his anti-government of national unity (GNU) stance, but the leadership feared a possible rebellion from Gauteng members, while Mtolo was to be told that KZN would be dissolved.

But that did not happen as the ANC then was worried former president Jacob Zuma could take advantage of the situation and recruit Mtolo to his uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.

But this time the postponed disbandment decision was set to be implemented, said the source with links to the ANC national executive committee.

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Once a stronghold, KwaZulu-Natal now in Jeopardy

KwaZulu-Natal was the only ANC-governed province where the party was completely ousted from power when it was beaten by the MK party, which received a majority vote in the May elections.

It was followed the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). Despite only being launched on 16 December, 2023, MK received a surprising 45.3% in the polls, IFP 18.16% and the ANC dropped from 54.2% to a paltry 17%.

But MK was unable to run the province after opposition parties – IFP, ANC, DA and National Freedom Party – formed a coalition known as the government of provincial unity. MK is the official opposition in the province as well as in the National Assembly.

In a letter to Mtolo, copied to the 11 ANC KZN deployees with convenor Zizi Kodwa, Mbalula invited the PEC to a meeting between the provincial leadership and the NWC.

“It is compulsory that all PEC members attend the meeting with the NWC. The agenda of the meeting will be shared in due course,” Mbalula said. He asked Mtolo to confirm the PEC’s attendance of the meeting.

Independent political analyst Sandile Swana attributed the ANC loss in KwaZulu-Natal to lack of trust for the party from the start in 1994.

“In KZN, it took very long for the ANC to be trusted and to be given power,” he said.

“It was the delivery under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki – and more especially under Mbeki – that the ANC started to be trusted. It was performance-based trust, so you cannot be trusted without a track record,” Swana said.

He said the ANC performance in all provinces had been dismal and that made people resent the party.

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