KwaZulu-Natal’s big election “winner”, the MK Party, on Tuesday said it would look outside its ranks for an executive council, prioritising talent, expertise, education and experience to form a government over internal political activists.
While the election has not produced a winner, Jacob Zuma’s MK Party fell just short of 50% to secure an outright majority to govern the province. The party is, however, still poised to dominate the provincial legislature after 1.58-million voters (45.35%) threw their weight behind it in the provincial ballot.
As coalition talks resume, MK Party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela repeated that the party would not enter any coalition with the DA and the ANC if President Cyril Ramaphosa remains at the helm.
The DA has also set conditions on the ANC demanding that it does not go into “any arrangement” with the MK party.
DA spokesperson Solly Malatsi said the federal executive’s mandate to its team of negotiators had been clear — “we wouldn’t be in favour of any arrangement that includes parties which have demonstrated anti-constitutional sentiments such as the EFF, MK and the PA”.
This means the ANC will have to walk a tightrope in negotiations with both parties if it intends to continue governing.
TimesLIVE Premium understands that the ANC has not formally met with the MK Party yet, but insiders said it had its first formal meeting with the EFF, DA and PA on Monday.
Should they form a government in KZN, Ndhlela said, they are not short of capable people to deploy for roles in the executive including those outside the party’s leadership structures.
“When it comes to provincial (KZN) leadership people are going to be surprised — be it premier or MECs — we are not going to base how we engage (with a potential executive) on political activism, we will be basing our choices on civil and social activism,” Ndhlela said.
“We are going to get competent people, we have the brains, we have engineers, highly educated, highly skilled social activists. From the finance and economic policy perspective we have the best calibre of people. We are going to bring in highly skilled people,” he added.
Ndhlela said the move is to avoid regurgitating “what the ANC has been doing, deploying incompetent politicians to government, because we can't come with solutions using the same method that created the problem”.
“We have to bring professionalism into the public sector. That vanished because of political activists who had no skill, no training whatsoever, and that is why the state of service delivery deteriorated entirely.
“The biggest problem has been a brain drain in key sectors and structures of our government, because when people do well, politicians creep in and taint their careers then we lose highly skilled people,” he explained.
The highly skilled people the party is looking at to form a government, he added, are those whose ideological position is similar to the MK Party.
“From a policy position if a person can vote for the ANC or EFF then we can work with them because those are parties we can have a coalition with — we only reject Ramaphosa because he represents white monopoly capital, he won't implement anything,” Ndhlela added.
Meanwhile the MK Party is still alleging voter fraud.
Ndhlela said while the party “deals with their stolen votes” they are conducting coalition talks.
Former president Zuma was placed at the centre of state capture by the Zondo Commission of inquiry.
The inquiry found the Gupta family employed “a calculated strategy ... to appropriate public funds from state-owned enterprises” and said the influence that they exerted over Zuma was “considerable”.
It said the South African Revenue Service (Sars) was systemically and deliberately weakened, chiefly through the restructuring of its institutional capacity, strategic appointments and dismissal of key individuals, and a pervasive culture of fear and bullying.
The report found that the Zuma regime permitted, supported and enabled corruption and state capture.
During his years in office, Zuma was found to have flouted the constitution and defied the apex court by refusing to obey its order to appear before the state capture commission.
The report found that Zuma played a critical role in dismantling Sars.
