The newconvener of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, party veteran Jeff Radebe, will spare no-one in his quest to renew and rebuild the party in the province.
The ANC has been battered in the province and received a mere 17% support at last year’s polls because residents have lost confidence in the party, Radebe said.
To change that trajectory, the newly appointed provincial task team (PTT) he leads will have to root out all ills including corruption that have become synonymous with the party in recent times, he said.
Speaking to TimesLIVE Premium, Radebe said he was not in KZN to make friends but to rebuild the ANC from the ground up, ensuring all its basic structures are in “tip-top position”.
“The ANC platform is burning. The mere fact that we got 17% [support] in the provincial and national elections in KwaZulu-Natal indicates that it’s not business as usual,” said Radebe.
The 72-year-old said the PTT would be taking a no-nonsense approach to reviving the ANC in the province. On the face of it, he said, their task looks daunting, but having been in the ANC since he was a teenager and in government for 25 years, Radebe believes he is up to the task.
“I always say that I love babies, but my responsibility in KwaZulu-Natal right now is not for me to kiss babies but to kick butt so that we can move with speed to correct all the problems.”
One of the key missions is ridding the party of the MK Party remnants and its so-called sleepers who are still lying low in the ANC in the province.
He also has to mend the ANC’s relations with the Zulu monarch that have been battered over years. He visited Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini this past week in what he described as a successful first meeting.
Radebe and his team also have to rebuild the party’s membership, ensure that the upcoming regional conferences run smoothly and elect proper leadership.
Of the 11 regions in KZN, nearly eight have expired mandates and will have to elect new leaders soon. But conferences are not top of mind for Radebe: the ANC has to establish what went wrong in the party and come up with solutions.
“My job at the moment is to answer three questions - the what, the who and the when. The what being the problem that we need to solve, then the who must be able to provide that solution and by when should we do that. We don’t have time there, our people are suffering in terms of service delivery. That is whyperformance monitoring is of critical importance for us to deliver better services,” said Radebe.
In his quest to monitor service delivery, Radebe told TimesLIVE Premium that one of the shocking discoveries he has made is that the critical KZN metro, eThekwini, has been spending R20m a month on water tankers since the destructive floods in 2022. This translates into R240m a year.
Radebe said this expensive transaction between private companies and the Ethekwini metro had been going on for 20 years, putting the expenditure at about R4bn.
He said the provincial task team would work closely with the presidential working group to ensure these types of expenditures are curbed.
Radebe said he made this discovery when he was chairing a provincial working committee meeting that was dissecting the critical challenges in the province, especially in the eThekwini metro.
The eThekwini metro had not responded to questions by the time of publication.
Radebe was concerned that when government was meant to be frugal, the municipality has been spending money on water tankers but had not resolved the matter.
“If the municipality provides water to these contractors, why can’t the municipality itself transport this water to communities that are affected instead of spending this money? It’s tantamount to employing a middle man,” said Radebe. “The formal report of the presidential working group will assist us a great deal because we have done a lot of work in analysing and dissecting the problem.”
Radebe said those who have been involved in any dodgy dealings that have created the trust deficit in the ANC would face the music.
He was installed as convener after the ANC NEC early this year decided to “reconfigure” leadership in two provinces after their dismal performance in the May 2024 national and provincial elections.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the ANC won only 17.2% of the vote to take third place. It is now part of a coalition led by the IFP. In Gauteng the ANC received 34.5% of votes — 19 percentage points down on 2019 — and formed a government with the help of smaller parties, excluding the DA.
“We want to restore the confidence of our people. My assessment thus far is that there’s positive traction among the people as was exhibited by our meeting with His Majesty King [Misuzulu],” he said.
“The king reminded us that his great grandfather King Dinuzulu was the honorary life president when the ANC was founded in 1912. As the ANC in KZN we want to continue and respect those historical roots with the Zulu royal family.”
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