ANC scraps meeting with labour allies

File picture: Sizwe Ndingane

File picture: Sizwe Ndingane

Published Aug 11, 2016

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Johannesburg - South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party cancelled a scheduled meeting that would have included its labour union allies and will instead have its highest decision-making body review its local election results, the worst the party has experienced since the end of apartheid.

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The National Executive Committee will meet in Pretoria over four days, with the review of the election performance one of the topics to be discussed, ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa said on Wednesday, declining to elaborate.

It had planned that the wider meeting, known as a “lekgotla”, would take place this coming weekend. The NEC meeting will be attended by about 100 senior leaders.

“The fact they want to dedicate the entire four days to ANC business shows there is alarm at the magnitude of the decline for the party,” Mcebisi Ndetyana, a politics professor at the University of Johannesburg, said by phone on Wednesday. “Any party that drops by 8 percentage points with national elections just in three years-time should be alarmed. But the question is not whether or not they are alarmed, but is whether they have the guts to do anything about it.”

The ANC’s support fell below below 50 percent in four major metropolitan areas, including Tshwane, where the capital city of Pretoria is situated, and Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub, while it retained majority control of only three of the nation’s eight metropolitan councils.

Coalition talks continued on Wednesday between parties including the opposition Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters. They have until August 20 to form governments in a total of 27 hung councils across the country following the August 3 elections.

The rand weakened on Thursday to end a three-day rally that took the currency to the best levels since mid-October, boosted partly by speculation that the ANC’s loss of support will pressure the party to introduce economic reforms that will spur growth and cut unemployment. The rand dropped 0.4 percent to 13.3315 per dollar by 7.49am in Johannesburg.

BLOOMBERG

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