The ANC must lose power – Kgalema Motlanthe

Former president Kgalema Motlanthe has told the BBC that it would be better for the ANC to lose power in order for it to get a wake-up call and rid itself of the corruption it is “associated with”.

Motlanthe, who ran unsuccessfully against Zuma for the presidency of the ANC in 2012, while he was still deputy president, has been increasingly sidelined in the governing party’s ranks since then.

He served as South Africa’s third democratic president between 2008 and 2009.

How the ANC has lost major metros is a possible and much-needed sign of things to come, the BBC reported.

Talking to BBC Hardtalk, he said: “It would be good for the ANC itself. Let me tell you why: because those elements who are in it for the largesse will quit it, will desert it and only then would the possibility arise for salvaging whatever is left of it.”

For the ANC to renew itself, it would first have to “hit rock bottom” and show lots of courage, he said. “It has to lose elections for the penny to drop,” Motlanthe told the BBC.

An analyst told The Citizen this week that the ANC has to officially split in order to survive, with the different strands that form its “broad church” nature going their separate ways. Prof Sipho Seepe said there was no need for the ANC to continue to exist in its current form.

“The ANC mustn’t be afraid to let certain groupings within itself go. The ANC must have the courage to say to its partners ‘thank you for walking with us, but we realise we can no longer continue to work together, let us part ways’,” Seepe said.

“The ANC has reached a political cul-de-sac where different strands are no longer manageable; where contradictions are so deep and have manifested themselves into tribalism; where some say there was a turn for the Xhosas and Zulus and now it should be a turn for the Vendas and other tribal groups,” Seepe said.

The only way that the ANC could save itself was to split, he insisted.

“Different formations must start walking their own ways,” he said. “You can see the glue that kept them together has become unstuck.”