INLSA

ANC provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala. Picture: Bongiwe Mchunu

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal has called for the review of the government’s procurement systems, saying that the tender system should be done away with as it was “corruptible”.

This proposal was just one of many adopted by delegates at the end of the party’s three-day lekgotla held in Dundee on Sunday. It would be tabled at the ANC’s policy conference in June, with KZN – the ANC’s largest province – saying it was hopeful that this would also be supported by other provinces.

Cosatu in KZN has also recently made similar calls on the tender system, with this gaining momentum, especially after the release of the Manase report into the affairs of the eThekwini municipality.

The report, released last week by MEC Nomusa Dube, revealed widespread abuse of the tender system, with the auditor-general flagging a total of R2.1 billion in irregular expenditure in the municipality in the past three financial years.

“It has been used in many instances to advance corruption. In some cases, also it leads to the government spending a lot of resources instead of focusing on the delivery of services,” said ANC provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala.

He said the ANC was proposing that the Chinese model be adopted whereby the government owned companies to drive its projects, and helped create jobs.

Another proposal that KZN would take to the policy conference and the national conference later in the year was for the party’s national executive committee (NEC) to be reduced from 88 members to 66.

Zikalala said the NEC was the highest decision-making body between conferences, so integrity was vital. “Some of the people in the NEC are found wanting,” he said, citing factionalism. Zikalala said members accepted the report into the feasibility of the study into the nationalisation of mines, but felt there should be an investigation into state intervention in other sectors.

Willies Mchunu, the deputy provincial chairman of the ANC, said the resolutions taken at the lekgotla were about the future of the country.

“This lekgotla is not an end to itself,” he said.