Johannesburg - The ANC needs to elect leaders capable of moving the country forward, ANC Gauteng leader Paul Mashatile said on Friday.
“When you renew your organisation and the way the ANC functions, as a leader of society you also have to make sure that you have leaders that are capable,” he said.
“(However) when you go to conference, you don't want to remove everybody. There are people with experience who are currently in the leadership that you want to retain.”
Mashatile, who is also the arts minister, was speaking at a Daily Maverick conference in Johannesburg.
He said the party needed a new “young” generation of leaders.
“There is a view that the ANC is very divided and therefore there is going to be blood on the floor when we get to (the elective conference) in Mangaung,” he said.
“Our approach is that that conference should be orderly... because what the delegates are doing is to exercise the right to choose a collective of leadership that they believe will be able to carry the organisation forward.”
Members who suggested that those who contested elections in the African National Congress were creating divisions were “incorrect”.
“Leadership must not be by arrangement; it must be an expression of the will of members, who must have an opportunity to choose freely,” he said.
“When you are a member of the ANC your responsibility is to serve the people. The ANC is not the place for self-enrichment,” he said, to laughs from the audience.
Mashatile said the ANC had to scrutinise its own leaders before the Public Protector would have to, and needed to develop an “integrity” committee.
The Gauteng ANC was scheduled to host its nomination conference next week, though the province previously announced that it preferred Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to take over from President Jacob Zuma. - Sapa