Ultimatum over lack of ANC action in Western Cape

The ANC Western Cape has been given a strict ultimatum to call an elective provincial conference or face defiance from disgruntled members, who are fed up with lack of ANC programme of action in the province.

Young ANC activists from party branches descended on the ANC provincial headquarters in Cape Town, where they delivered a memorandum to party’s interim provincial committee (IPC) coordinator, Ronalda Mulango.

The protesters were led by Akhona Jonginamba and Siyabonga Nqanqase-Booysen.

The ANC in the Western Cape has been almost dead despite the appointment of the IPC by Luthuli House in 2019 to replace the dissolved provincial executive committee. The IPC, led by Lerumo Kalako as convenor, had been criticised for having no programmes despite the upcoming provincial conference, national policy conference and, ultimately, the elective national conference.

The province has yet to pronounce its positions on new party policies and various other matters. It is not clear to which of the two main ANC factions the province belonged.

Even the party’s national executive committee (NEC) member Tony Yengeni has been unable to influence the province to follow his radical economic transformation faction.

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There is little hope the ANC would ever return to power in the province since its brief four-year stint that ended in 2009, when the Democratic Alliance wrested power from the ANC once more.

“The young activists of the ANC in the Western Cape are concerned about the snail’s pace of IPC in delivering on its mandate,” Jonginamba said.

They demanded a date for the holding of a conference and a clear road map towards the provincial conference. They said the IPC must convene an urgent provincial cadres’ forum to deliberate on the state of the organisation in the province.

“We demand the removal of IPC members from all interim regional structures and for the ANC to withdraw from all coalitions arrangements it had the province,” said Jonginamba. “If our demands are not met we will have no option but to defy the authority of the IPC.”