In order to do well in the coming national elections next year, the African National Congress needs to unite or be prepared to deal with the consequences, says local leadership.
About 400 ANC members in Maphumulo and Tshawini had allegedly switched to the Inkatha Freedom Party – a sign that the ruling party needs to roll up their sleeves if they want to maintain people’s trust.
At the regional ANC council meeting held at the Ilembe Auditorium in KwaDukuza last Wednesday, it was revealed that 100 ANC members had joined the IFP in ward five in Maphumulo, while the IFP said about 300 ANC members had joined the IFP in Tshawini.
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ANC regional spokesperson Thandeka Ngidi, who is also a councillor in Tshawini, denied that those are members of the ANC.
She said they might be people who are known to be ANC supporters.
“I have never heard of such thing, If we have such a high number of good standing members leaving the ANC I would know,” said Ngidi.
The ANC council was attended by more than a hundred ANC branch delegates who were going to the ANC provincial conference that was postponed last weekend. Speaking at the council, regional chairperson Ricardo Mthembu expressed shock regarding the loss of membership in Maphumulo. He urged members not to make the mistake of pointing fingers at who was responsible for the loss but rather focus on fixing current problems faced by the ANC.
“Besides the 100 members we lost, how many people who are not members of the ANC but who were ANC voters will we lose in the coming elections? We need to be realistic and change our mindset. We fight endless fights due to the fact that we chose not to follow our own guidelines. In whatever we do, the ANC must be the beneficiary, not our feelings,” said Mthembu.
Regional IFP treasury Musa Sibisi said they were not only growing in Maphumulo and Nsthawini, but also in the Ilembe region as a whole.
“We recently came back from a national meeting and Ilembe is one of the districts that is growing very fast. We are confident that we are going to do well in elections because even in Mandeni and Ndwedwe membership is also growing,” said Sibisi.
He said he believes the internal fights in the ANC are what makes people sceptical about the leadership of the ANC, therefore it becomes easy to convince them to join the IFP.
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