Johannesburg - The ANC has promised to fire all its local government councillors who were fraudulently elected to represent the ruling party in municipalities across the country.
However, the ANC has postponed the naming and shaming of those councillors until after Mangaung next month.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe announced the impending dismissals on Monday, saying the decision had been endorsed at the party’s last national executive committee (NEC) meeting held in Pretoria at the weekend.
The recommendation came from a task team led by Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, who was asked to probe allegations that the ANC’s nine provinces had manipulated the list of people who were selected to be councillors before the local government elections last year.
Mantashe told the media that the task team had investigated complaints and disputes from 419 wards.
He said a majority of 3 500 wards of the ANC had adhered to the guidelines of the ANC.
“The report will be taken to all the provinces and the specific recommendations will be handed over to the new NEC for implementation, including cases where the task team recommends that ANC processes be redone and those where the team recommended that the councillor be recalled or by-elections be redone,” Mantashe said.
While the ANC had identified only 10 percent of the wrongdoers, the task team report shown to The Star had identified the worst incidents of manipulation in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the task team reported that most complaints had come from the Moses Mabhida and eThekwini regions. The team said the manipulation of lists affected the ANC performance in the local government election.
“In this regard, it met with the ANC branch leadership in Ward 18, Harry Gwala region (Umzimkhulu), where the ANC lost to an independent candidate with a view to investigating underlying factors that may have caused the ANC to lose a traditional stronghold,” the report said.
The task team identified similar problems in the Eastern Cape’s OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo regions, “where lists and preferred candidates who emerged from branch general meetings had been changed fundamentally”.
“What also emerged at the task team engagement with OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo regions is the allegation that the provincial executive committee tampered with the 25 percent principle for proportional representative candidates by effecting changes without bringing the regional executive committees on board on such changes,” the report said.
The task team also found that some of the ANC branches had been influenced to appoint candidates by business people who wanted to get tenders from the municipalities.
The report said: “It was apparent in instances that people from outside the organisation exerted undue pressure and influence on branch members to choose certain candidates who would facilitate from them to get tenders and other business opportunities.
Mantashe said the party would take disciplinary action against all those found to have manipulated the selection of candidates, but only next year.
The Star