Johannesburg - The ANC will conduct a skills audit and screen members who will take up crucial positions in the organisation to avoid having “factory faults” leading in its ranks.
This is one of the proposals that will be debated at the party’s national conference in June.
Newly appointed Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said on Sunday the ruling party was determined to root out rotten apples in its leadership structures such as the national executive committee (NEC).
Mbalula, who is ANC chairperson of the sub-committee on organisational development, said there needed to be a difference between an NEC member and a branch member.
“It is assumed that when you are elected in the NEC you are a leader with impeccable credentials. Leaders of the ANC at a macro political level in terms of the NEC are people who must provide and give direction to membership and society,” he said.
Mbalula was speaking at the party’s headquarters, Luthuli House in Johannesburg, on the party discussion document on organisational renewal.
The aim of the discussion around the policy document, according to the party, is aimed at provoking robust debates within ANC structures as well as its Alliance partners.
Mbalula spoke about cabinet ministers who have expressed their concerns about the state of disarray the ANC is in. Chief among the organisational renewal conversation, Mbalula said, was the ability of the ANC to reinvent itself.
“We are an organisation that believes that we have not reached inertia in terms of ideas. We subscribe to the notion that organisations evolve within an environment and epoch. They don’t remain static. If organisations don’t renew themselves over time, they die.”
Mbalula added that the ANC urgently needed to review its electoral processes and ensure they were transparent as members who made themselves available for public office had to be prepared for their names and manifestos to be subjected to scrutiny.
He said the policy conference would be extended by two days to accommodate the Veterans League’s consultative conference.
“The ANC should position the Veterans League as a council of elders whose main political function would be to provide advice and counsel to the structures veterans should not contest leadership positions within the ANC,” he said.