Kimberley - ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile has maintained that it was all systems go for the party's annual January 8 birthday rally in Kimberley in the Northern Cape on Saturday.
Mashatile was speaking in Hulana Park in Galeshewe where he canvassed support for the party’s upcoming birthday rally that will take place on Saturday at the 11 000-seater and 25 000-capacity Tafel Lager Park Stadium, also known as Griqua Park.
He indicated that the party had lined up two key activities for Friday before the main rally; the presidential golf day and the gala dinner, where business leaders will rub shoulders with the ANC’s top brass.
“In the evening, we will have dinner and the president will speak on what issues he will be dealing with in the January statement,” Mashatile said.
Since the beginning of the week, the ANC top brass has been crisscrossing the province drumming up support for its birthday rally.
Mashatile has also defended the party’s leadership under President Cyril Ramaphosa from accusations that it is refusing to implement policies of radical socio-economic transformation in government.
Ramaphosa is expected on Saturday to outline the blueprint for the party’s programmes for the year ahead.
Recently, senior leaders of the governing party had publicly disagreed on whether some of the resolutions adopted at the party’s 2017 conference, including the nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank, were worth implementing.
Mashatile said the ANC leadership respected the resolutions and would not just implement them without following due processes and contestation.
“When you implement policy as leadership, you go through phases. You go through engagements and challenges, but there is no retreat.
“Where there are challenges, we will go back to the NGC (national general council) and say to our members on this one there is this or that stumbling block and maybe instead of doing it this way, we (should) go that way. So we will use the NGC to review the challenges,” he said.