Cape Town - The ANC’s National Working Committee led by President Jacob Zuma jetted into the city on Monday, dispelling speculation that the province’s provincial leadership was facing disbandment.
Zuma and his team even gave the provincial leadership under provincial chairman Marius Fransman and secretary Songezo Mjongile the thumbs-up for the work they’ve done so far.
The NEC visited the province last month and gave the ANC Provincial Executive Committee a month to come up with a battle plan to deepen unity in the party.
Insiders say the plan presented by Fransman got the green light from the NEC.
Rubbishing claims of the possibility of dissolving the provincial structures, ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa on Tuesday stressed that the purpose of their visit was never to disband or dissolve the party structures.
“It was never in the plans of the national leadership to disband the Western Cape. It was never an issue. There has always been gossip about it, but our responsibility is not to go around disbanding structures but to help to build a strong organisation.”
Kodwa said the president had also led the previous visit last month.
According to Kodwa, the NEC was satisfied that since their last visit, the province had made significant progress to unify different people within the province. “We are happy, now we are more than happy about the state of the ANC in the Western Cape.”
Fransman said they were extremely happy with the confidence the president and the NEC had shown in their leadership.
He said the president was particularly concerned about the plight of the coloured community in the province in so far as issues of violent gangs plaguing communities.
He said the NEC wanted a united provincial leadership to deal with issues of service delivery as well as to create social cohesion among all cultures in the Western Cape.
To those who consistently called for the provincial leadership to be dissolved, Fransman said the best thing they could do was to stop their stirring and gossip and assist in unifying the organisation.
“We are calling on our structures to continue preaching unity and those that are still refusing to work together, to abandon their destructive ways and work towards unifying the ANC,” Fransman added.
Clarifying the reason for the NEC’s visit, Kodwa said they had visited the province last month because they were worried about the state of the organisation.
“We committed ourselves to build a strong African National Congress, to grow its membership and we went and met with all the branches in the regions to get a first hand account,” he added.
Kodwa said the NEC was proud that in a short space of time the province managed to make headway – even establishing a branch in Sea Point, an area the ANC was once very active in.
“Whatever divisions that were there due to the 2011 conference, they are now behind them. The provincial leadership is now focusing on building a strong ANC in the province and we are quite happy as the national leadership.”
But Kodwa warned that unity could not be reached overnight.
“The first indication of unity starts off with a commitment to unify. We don’t doubt the commitment to unity because we already see signs in some areas. We went to West Coast, we went to Karoo, the Overberg and the Southern Cape, and we can see bubbles of unity. People are tired of infighting.”
Moving to complaints and disputes lodged by regions over the recent regional conferences held in the Overberg and the Central Karoo, Kodwa said they had asked the leadership to address whatever issues that arose during conferences.
“The provincial leadership must go there with one mind and resolve these issues speedily. Nothing must be left unattended. Every complaint must be dealt with.
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Cape Argus