Pretoria – The recently elected provincial executive committee (PEC) of the African National Congress in the Western Cape (ANCWC) on Tuesday asked the media to give them a chance to prove their worth.
“The ANC is a big ship and we cannot turn things around overnight, but we appeal to you to give us a chance,” said provincial secretary Faiez Jacobs at a media briefing at their Cape Town head office on Tuesday.
Jacobs, who was on Sunday elected into the position of provincial secretary during the eighth ANCWC conference, asked media to join the party on a “clean slate”. The relationship between media and the ANC had been discussed in depth at the conference, particularly during chairperson Marius Fransman’s political overview of the last four years.
“We would like to start on a clean slate, a new page,” said Jacobs during the briefing.
“We see common grounds with the media fraternity,” Jacobs said. “We don’t always have to be in constant competition with one another.”
Jacobs said that he hoped journalists would act on behalf of their respective audiences in holding politicians accountable and by enhancing dialogue and debate.
He added that the onus was also on the party to tell its own story in a better way.
“We must better equipp to tell ours because we have a good story [to tell], although we have our challenges,” Jacobs said, speaking to journalists.
Fransman reiterated Jacobs’ request for media and the party to start on a new slate, saying that what they wanted was a “genuine engagement” with the media.
Fransman said that the party did not expect media to agree with everything they did or said, nor would the ANCWC approve of everything journalists chose to write. “All we are calling for is constructive engagement,” said Fransman.
ANA