So many questions on the ANC's consultative conference

ANC veterans have called for a consultative conference, which the party’s leadership has finally agreed to. Chris Barron asked former minister Sydney Mufamadi ...

What are you hoping will come out of the consultative conference?

I think it's no exaggeration to say that something has gone wrong in the makeup of the ANC.

Will the consultative conference be able to put it right?

Well, the ANC NEC, after the local-government elections, said it is committing to a process of introspection ...

Do you believe that?

They must be made to act on the terms to which they profess a commitment.

Are you hoping this will happen at the consultative conference?

Introspection is a political programme to be implemented, it's not just an aspiration that you voice and do nothing about. We have undertaken to work with the current leadership to ensure this process of introspection does indeed take place.

Can there be proper introspection under the current leadership?

Some people said that the consultative conference should be organised by someone other than the current leadership. We have no intention to supplant a democratically elected leadership but we are prepared to lend our own organisational and political experience to this process.

Will it be enough?

What is important is to get the membership to meet, within the structures of the ANC, to look at what is happening today and to what extent is it a deviation from the principles and ethics of the ANC ...

What do you think?

You will have seen a surge of public unhappiness, which culminated in the electoral support of the ANC going southwards.

Are you concerned that without radical change this trend will continue up to 2019?

Yes, sure. But it is important not just to look at this matter as being about the political fortunes of the ANC.

You mean the interests of the country should come first?

That's right. You have to think about where this country comes from. The forces for good won the war against the barbarity of apartheid but now we are losing the war after having won it.

Is a consultative conference too little too late?

mini_story_image_hleft1

It's never too late to introspect and determine the strategic and tactical responses required to restore the momentum of positive change in the country.

You think all this can be done in time to avert defeat in 2019?

I wouldn't talk about it in those narrow terms of averting defeat ...

Are you hoping the consultative conference will lead to a new electoral system?

No, maybe a new beginning for the ANC.

Can there be a new beginning under the same leadership?

Those are questions the conference must address. Between the consultative and elective conferences there will be time for further discussion by members of the ANC who shall have said: are we as the ANC fit to execute the mandate which the people of South Africa have given us? Do we have the type of leadership that is ethical, principled and committed to implementing the vision of our organisation?

Aren't the answers self-evident?

Saying that everything is self-evident is a lazy approach to questions of strategy.

Why have the veterans not called for the president to be removed?

I have personally made that call a long time ago.

Why has the collective not done so?

They haven't called for him to remain in office either.

Is it time to be forthright?

The process of introspection we are talking about must allow people to decide whether they are happy with the leadership or not. The committee hearings into the SABC ... if that was the spirit in which parliament was operating all along, I think a lot of things would have been put right by now.

What do you think of how the SABC has treated the committee?

I'm wondering if they're conscious of the fact that they're a public broadcaster with an obligation to account to the people through parliament. The fact that parliament is waking up to its responsibility is gratifying.

Can there be change with Zuma in power?

We are insisting in terms of this introspection that the ANC has committed itself to that members must have an unfettered freedom of dissent. You have people who recently initiated a motion of no confidence against the president in the NEC. If the president were to remove those people it would make a mockery of the professed commitment to introspection.

Are you frightened that he might remove key cabinet members?

Anybody who does a thing that is highly likely to enrage the masses of the people must know that they do such a thing to their own detriment.

Might the consultative conference lead to changes in the NEC?

If you decide ... that certain things must be done as a corrective to things that are going wrong, then you go out to implement them.