Former president Thabo Mbeki says the ANC is at risk because it has failed to renew itself as a party and many of its leaders are still only interested in access to powerful positions.
In a wide-ranging interview with TimesLIVE after celebrating his 80th birthday, Mbeki said the party was approaching its elective conference in December without having renewed itself.
This has led pundits to speculate the former liberation movement will collapse within two years.
This critical challenge of renewal, unfortunately it's not being done
Renewing the ANC was one of the main mandates the party gave to its national executive committee (NEC) at its 54th national conference in 2017.
“Fortunately at its last national conference in 2017 the ANC itself said so. It said we must go through a process of renewal otherwise the ANC will cease to exist. That was a very correct decision of conference,” Mbeki said.
“This critical challenge of renewal, unfortunately it's not being done. The leadership that emerged at that conference has not engaged that process of renewal. The conference said the national executive committee itself must attend to this matter and to date it has not done so. So the matter is still under discussion.”
The resistance is playing itself out in contestation about the “step aside rule” which prohibits members who face criminal or corruption charges from holding any position of power in the party. Any elected leader facing charges has to voluntarily vacate their position or face suspension.
The rule is at risk of being repealed in December.
Mbeki said it still wasn't too late to save the ANC. “Of course, if it collapsed because of its own misdeeds in two years or whenever that people are talking about, then we will have to deal with a different situation, but as of now it's a responsibility of the leaders and members of the governing party to make sure that they rescue it from what it is,” he said.
“It has to go through a process of renewal, there is resistance to that from within but it has to happen.”
'People join ANC to get access to powerful positions'
One of the problems the party faced was that people who joined to pursue powerful positions had become dominant.
“The reality is that you then get a considerable number of people who are members of the ANC, which is a governing party, who are driven by motives other than those of a liberation movement. Hence you’ll get instances of corruption,” Mbeki said.
Former president Nelson Mandela had correctly warned the ANC that its divisions were not due to policy disagreements but rooted in power struggles.
“That has affected the ANC, and because it's been the governing party nationally since 1994 it then produces a particular impact on the country,” said Mbeki.
“My view is that we are not going to be able to help SA to get out of these major challenges of corruption, of bad governance, of widespread criminality, which basically really amounts to the disrespect for the law.
“We are not going to be able to overcome these challenges until we sort out this governing party which is a dominant political formation in SA.”
TimesLIVE
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