Pretoria - This weekend’s Tshwane ANC regional conference will be a measure of the popularity of the leadership, says mayor and party leader, Kgosientso Ramokgopa.
“By Sunday at the end of the conference, we will know who the delegates prefer as leader,” he told a press conference at the party’s regional offices in Arcadia on Thursday.
“The product of the conference will indicate the desires of the delegates.”
A confident Ramokgopa, who will be seeking re-election, referred to a Gauteng City-Region Observatory survey, which listed Pretoria as the best city to live in. When people called for a change in leadership, their views should be based on the performance of the leaders, he said.
Ramokgopa has come under heavy criticism from the Tshwane SACP, Cosatu, SA Students Congress, ANC Youth League and Young Communist League, who accused him of presiding over a corrupt municipality.
The organisations - traditionally ANC partners - were due to march to the Union Buildings on Friday demanding the municipality be dissolved and placed under administration, as reported by the Pretoria News on Wednesday.
They are also calling for Ramokgopa to be replaced as regional ANC leader - and subsequently as mayor.
Ramokgopa said there was a trend to march and make allegations of corruption before ANC conferences.
He appealed to those with information on corruption in the city to refer it to law enforcement agencies, dismissing the claims as political gossip that should be raised at branch level.
“It’s all an attempt to make the city ungovernable. There is no benefit in taking matters to the streets while internal structures exist,” said Ramokgopa.
“There is unity in the ANC in Tshwane. Evidence of this was during our participation in the provincial conference last week where we spoke with one voice.”
Regional secretary Paul Mojapelo said the youth league, SACP, Cosatu and other alliance structures had been invited to the conference.
The youth league has, meanwhile, decided to boycott the event.
Mojapelo said just about all the conference delegates were already registered, with the process expected to be completed later this morning.
Newly re-elected Gauteng ANC chairman Paul Mashatile will deliver a keynote address to further strengthen the relationship between the regional and provincial structures.
Dumisa Ntuli, provincial ANC spokesman, said: “We are confident the regional conference will be successful and the outcome will further strengthen unity and cohesion in Gauteng.”
City of Tshwane mayoral spokesman Blessing Manale said it was regrettable that the metro and Ramokgopa remained under attack by the youth wing of his own organisation as well as its alliance partners.
Manale called for an honest assessment of whether these were not machinations of low-intensity warfare on the institutional integrity of the city for dubious purposes.
Chairman of the ANC Inner City Zone, Matsobane Ledwaba, told the Pretoria News that Ramokgopa had the backing of the branches in good standing, which would be the majority at the conference.
Ledwaba said the alliance partners calling for Ramokgopa’s head had no voting powers.
They could state their leadership preferences in the ANC, just as the party did at its successful conferences where the ruling party participated without prescribing who to appoint as their leaders.
“Equally, members of our alliance partners - many members of the ANC as well - must allow the structures and branches of ANC to nominate who they prefer to lead them,” he said.
“They must engage the ANC leadership with proper decorum, not memorandums tantamount to counter-revolutionary tendencies which we regret and unequivocally condemn.”
Pretoria News