Ace Magashule: ANC Western Cape branches accept interim leadership

The ANC says it's confident that its structures in the Western Cape have accepted the interim leadership structure it has put in place following its decision earlier this month to disband the provincial executive committee.

This is according to ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule following a one-day meeting of the party's national executive committee, its highest decision making body between conferences, in Cape Town on Sunday.

The NEC spent the weekend briefing its branches in the Western Cape on the decision to dissolve its PEC earlier this month following years of lack of unity, factionalism and a poor electoral showing in the May general elections.

There has also been criticism from within the ANC, including from the SA Communist Party, of the NEC's decision to include leaders of the dissolved PEC in the interim provincial committee.

But Magashule said reports presented to the NEC on Sunday following meetings with branch leaders from the six regions of the province have shown that the IPC has now been accepted by ANC members.

The IPC has been given a maximum of nine months to lead the ANC in the Western Cape into a provincial congress to elect new leadership.

Lerumo Kalako, a former ANC MP who is the convenor of the interim leadership, said they believed the members of the dissolved leadership were still capable of contributing to building unity within the ANC.

"Those  comrades can still contribute in building the organisation, in assisting towards what we must achieve, which is primarily unity of the ANC and the unity of communities in the Western Cape.

"You cannot deal with unity if you are not honest and forthright with each other, you don't deal with unity if you don't discuss issues as a collective.

"We have a broad representative of various layers of leadership in the province. There are comrades who have been in the PEC for a long time in the province, others have been in and out. So it's a broad committee which will be able to handle issues."

Kalako said among the many issues the IPC would focus on, was rekindling the relationship between the ANC and the middle class in the Western Cape.

"One of the issues confronting us in the province is the middle class drifting away from the ANC precisely because we don’t give them space, as we used to before, to give them space to participate in the programmes of the ANC and to voice their opinions. So we've been given a strict instruction to try to correct that and that goes also to sectors such as religion, youth and women and people with disabilities which used to be in the fold of the ANC."

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