Ramaphosa in Limpopo to strengthen his December campaign?

ANC top brass – President Cyril Ramaphosa, Transport Minister and party head of elections Fikile Mbalula and Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni are gunning for the party’s biggest region in Limpopo, on different government programmes.

Ramaphosa will be in Limpopo in the Norman Mashabane region on Tuesday, alongside Mbalula to assess
the completion of the 40km rural access road in the Greater Letaba local municipality. The visit coincides with that of Ntshavheni, a strong Ramaphosa ally, who was tasked with fundraising for his CR17 campaign at the party’s Nasrec elective conference in 2017.

Ramaphosa has ancestral roots in the Vhembe region of Limpopo and had also attended part of his primary education there. Ntshavheni also hails from the same region. She was appointed by Ramaphosa on 21 January 2021
as acting minister in the Presidency responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluation.

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She was appointed into the current position by Ramaphosa in August. She will be in the Greater Tzaneen local municipality to switch off analogue transmitters to ensure 80% of the population has access to the internet by 2024, as required by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

During the regional election conference last year, Norman Mashabane was the only region in Limpopo where Ramaphosa delivered a keynote address. The region, the biggest with a total of 129 branches, is also the first to pronounce Ramaphosa’s re-election for a second term.

The visit by the three ANC heavyweights is, however, viewed by some as “an ANC ploy” to amass much-needed support for Ramaphosa ahead of the party’s December elective conference.

Other people who spoke to The Citizen said the visit was a Ramaphosa “strategy to kill two birds with one stone” – to personally thank Limpopo for being the first to support his re-election, while others said he would use the opportunity to personally thank ANC Norman Mashabane regional chair Pule Shayi.

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