ANC secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said on Tuesday that a comment made by Collen Malatji, leader of the ANC Youth League, suggesting that voting patterns in KwaZulu-Natal are dictated by tribal lines had been misinterpreted.
Mbalula was speaking in Amaoti, near Inanda, as the party’s senior leaders embark on a door-to-door campaign in the province to convince supporters in stronghold areas to vote in their numbers at the May 29 provincial and national elections.
Malatji, at a recent media briefing at the ANC’s Luthuli House headquarters in Johannesburg, expressed concerns about KZN’s historical voting trends, implying tribal affiliations pose a challenge to the governing party and that voter education was needed to change this trend.
“KwaZulu-Natal has a history of people voting along tribal lines sometimes, which is part of the challenge we are faced with.
“If you check the voting pattern in KZN, under the tribalists from Nkandla (Zuma), you saw the ANC increasing votes; when President Cyril Ramaphosa came in, there was a decline because of how they (the KZN people) have been cultured,” Malatji said.
Mbalula said Malatji’s comments had been misinterpreted and blown out of proportion and the youth league had been asked to clarify the statements.
He said the association with KZN and tribalism was mentioned often but people in the province had for years been voting for the ANC and other political parties.
“The fact of the matter is that KZN is overwhelmingly dominated by Zulu-speaking people, they are the biggest ethnic group in our country and the ANC is the largest political party by far in this province.
“So there can never be an issue of tribalism, when I spoke to the Youth League they said they had been misinterpreted.”
He said the ANC will not stand for any tribalism, “in whatever form that it seeks to raise its ugly head”.
“Any leader of the ANC who seeks to rise on the basis of a tribe, (by saying) that I am Xhosa or I am something else, has been defeated in our ranks.
“We will never condone that and anyone who practices such will face the wrath of the ANC.”
Residents in Amaoti told Mbalula, who was accompanied by Musa Nciki, the eThekwini regional secretary, that a lack of water, high crime rates, unemployment and electricity outages were some of their major concerns.
One resident told Mbalula that he lived with four other family members in his house and all were unemployed.
The family received a small income by letting out two rooms on an adjoining building.
Another resident said there were many illegal firearms in the community and the crime rate was high.
Mbalula said job creation and training was among the party’s main priorities.
“Some of the opportunities include the Presidential Stimulus Programmes and we are turning the R350 grant into the basic income grant, which means while people are waiting and looking for job opportunities and still getting the R350, they will be getting training to prepare them for the job market.
They will get the skills and be out of the system of R350 and because they can do things for themselves.”
Mbalula said communities must work together with the police to fight crime.
“They must be organised, the councillor, ward committees, ANC branches and the community at large must work together to fight crime and create committees like street committees in order to fight crime.
“They must work with the police and community policing forums,” Mbalula said.
The Mercury