Durban - Adequate municipal service delivery and party unity will be the top priorities of the new KwaZulu-Natal ANC regional leaders to be elected in the next two months.
Most of the regions have indicated that they are nearly ready for the elective conferences in April.
The regions which will hold elective conferences are: eThekwini, Moses Mabhida and Lower South Coast.
Moses Mabhida and Lower South Coast regions were disbanded in 2017 after they were engulfed with infighting between supporters of former president Jacob Zuma and his successor President Cyril Ramaphosa. eThekwini was disbanded after its term of office had expired.
Lower South Coast regional co-ordinator Siyabonga Nene said he expected the new leadership to ensure unity among members.
He said his region was disbanded and replaced with a regional task team in 2017 because the elected structure had lost control of the branches.
“There was too much factionalism, gatekeeping and people could no longer feel that they were represented by the structure (regional executive committee),” said Nene.
Nene said there was urgent need for the elected structure as the task team had lacked legitimacy to unite branches.
“The conference is scheduled for two months from now, but the date has not been set because there is a delay in the sitting of the BGMs (branch executive meetings) that are busy with auditing and disputes and registration (of delegates),” he said.
Nene said out of 88 of his region’s branches, 75 were ready for the sitting of BGMs. He said 13 other branches had been given five days from Monday (this week) to deal with their challenges.
“Our intention is to make sure that all branches participate in this conference.
“Matters that should be corrected include branches who do not have 100 members, which is a requirement to constitute a branch.
“In most cases people have not been accepted by the audit committee as they had lost proof of payment,” said Nene.
He said some branches had not been able to submit all membership slips to the province.
“But that will be addressed within a few days, and once that is done we will see an increase in the number of branches that qualify to participate in the conference,” he said.
He said the new leadership will have to renew the organisation.
“Once we have renewed it, we must rebuild structures, and make them user friendly when it comes to service delivery,” he said.
Moses Mabhida RTT coordinator Mandla Zondi said they were waiting for secretary-general Ace Magashule to sign the audit report.
“I have been informed by provincial secretary (Mdumiseni Ntuli) that the audit report will be signed before the end of today (Tuesday).
“Possibly by Saturday we will call branches to give them the road maps for the BGMs,” he said.
He said once the region gets the final audit report, all 88 BGMs would sit, possibly in the first week of March.
“We want new leadership to interact with people because service delivery should be the priority,” said Zondi.