By Phida Essop
President Thabo Mbeki, who is also the ANC president, has taken the extraordinary step of becoming an ex officio member of the ANC Western Cape leadership - in an apparent attempt to heal the split in the province.
The move follows a two-day meeting in the city, and well-placed sources told the Cape Argus that the question of divisions within the ANC in the province was a key item on the agenda.
Mbeki held a similar meeting with the ANC leadership in the embattled Eastern Cape two weeks ago, but did not attach himself to the provincial leadership there.
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| 'Mbeki plans to visit all nine provinces before the end of the year' |
A senior ANC source at the meeting in Cape Town told the Cape Argus healing the divisions was "central to the meeting".
Mbeki "wanted to keep his finger on the pulse in the province, which is why he volunteered to become an ex officio member of the provincial executive committee," the source said.
A second source, who also did not wish to be named, said the move would allow Mbeki to "micro-manage" the ANC in the Western Cape,
Mbeki plans to visit all nine provinces before the end of the year to get a briefing from their leaders about the state of their organisation and progress in fulfilling promises to the electorate.
On Sunday Mbeki and the Western Cape executive held a press conference at the provincial legislature at which they denied talk of divisions.
Mbeki said he was "very pleased" with the sense of cohesion in the provincial executive committee in the Western Cape.
"There is no division in the province," he said. "It is differences that you have. It is in the daily work that there will be differences of approach."
Mbeki said he was becoming a member of the committee in a bid to help root out racism in the province.
The greatest challenge South Africa faced in developing non-racialism was in the Western Cape, he told the media briefing.
"Everybody must get a sense that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.
Given the importance of the matter, I volunteered to work with the provincial executive committee on what I believe is an important national matter," he said.
He pointed out that the Western Cape was the only province where Africans were a minority.
"There is that old history of coloured labour preference," he said. "It produced a particular composition in terms of the demography of the province."
He cited the example of a district municipality in the Western Cape which employed 500 workers, with at most eight of them ethnic Africans.
"I doubt that you would find any district municipality (anywhere else) in the country that would have that kind of feature in terms of the people it employs.
"I think you would also find a greater sensitivity about these race questions in the Western Cape than anywhere else in the country."
Earlier this year, former Western Cape ANC provincial leader Alan Boesak accused the ruling party of deliberately allowing the ANC to bring back the language of racial categorisation.
At Sunday's briefing, ANC provincial chairman James Ngculu described the Western Cape as the "province of pronounced inequality" and said it was important to address the core challenges facing the poor.
Squatter camps were very visible in such areas as Khayelitsha, Gugulethu and Philippi, but not so obvious in Lavender Hill, Retreat or Mitchells Plain. "Yet if you go inside houses in these areas, you will see how families are squashed together into a backyard or into a room."
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on August 28, 2006
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