ANC councillors who were fraudulently elected and others imposed by bypassing party-sanctioned community meetings will be removed as party representatives in various municipal councils across the country.
This was the promise made by ANC’s head of elections, Fikile Mbalula, in his bid to contain the outrage expressed by various party members following the exclusion of candidates who were elected during community meetings. Mbalula’s statement came after thousands of angry members marched to Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters, and various provincial headquarters to demand the removal of “fake candidates”.
Unhappy with the apparent slow reaction to their demands, some of the members threatened to boycott the polls, while others vowed to vote for independent candidates.
Appearing to soothe their sentiments, Mbalula said: “It is the ANC’s conviction that our voters must have a final say on the selection of comrades who should form part of the local government.This approach gives concrete expression to the Freedom Charter vision that ’The people shall govern’.
“The democratic nature of the ANC’s internal processes on candidate selection has generated unprecedented interest from the communities throughout the country.
“This had also resulted in robust contest among the candidates, and we have as such been inundated with disputes,” he said.
He said the ANC electoral committee under Kgalema Motlanthe had established rules for the candidate selection process with guidelines on the resolution of the disputes, saying the directive of the electoral committee was that all disputes should be lodged with the provincial list committees (PLC) and appeals against the PLC verdicts should be lodged with electoral committee for final decisions.
“In the spirit of renewal within the ANC, the electoral committee has directed that all the disputes lodged in accordance with the rules must be attended to. In some instances, there are serious allegations of transgressions, including the manipulation of candidate lists. All these matters are being investigated by the relevant ANC structures so that disciplinary and legal action could be taken against the transgressors,” Mbalula said.