Cape Town - The ANC has a realistic chance of taking back governance of the Western Cape from the Democratic Alliance, provincial party leader Marius Fransman said on Thursday.
“Indeed I say so, we will be able to govern again and some would be able to say 'impossible',” he told the Cape Town Press Club.
“I would be able to say for those doubting Thomas's, we're going to get Table Mountain to disappear so that you at least believe what I'm saying.”
Fransman said the ANC brand in the province had strengthened since 2011 and come out of Mangaung without an implosion in the provincial leadership.
The focus ahead of national elections next year was to draft a provincial manifesto by speaking to communities about what 25 issues affected them.
The party would be punting the future of agriculture and a new deal for farmworkers in this document.
Fransman said they would also push to act on the Employment Tax Incentive Bill, which was recently published for comment.
“... There's not too much action and so we're saying to national government, let's act on this issue in the manifesto process.”
The manifesto would be adopted by the ANC national executive committee next month and be made public in January.
Fransman admitted the party had put an unequal focus on highlighting service delivery issues in the DA administration at the expense of economic policy issues.
“We'll even make certain concessions in that and say even the last few years, our focus (has been) on service delivery. As we've assessed our own situation we've said it's important to look at the economy and factors that will bring stabilisation.
“The strategic question is, and what the ANC is starting to argue, can we take the debate on soundbites away, can we take the debate on politics of deception away, and can we get into a real debate on the economy?”
He said the Western Cape had slipped into third place, behind KwaZulu-Natal, in its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the past five years.
Despite this, the DA chose to point fingers at the ANC for damaging the economy by playing a part in the recent so-called “poo protests”, which blocked the N2 highway at regular intervals earlier in the year.
“It (pointing fingers) can be an argument in the short-term but not in the long-term.”
Fransman said the party had publicly distanced itself from the protests as an “unacceptable and vulgar campaign”, and instituted disciplinary procedures against those responsible.
Asked if he believed he had led the party well, Fransman said the success of winning wards from the DA in by-elections spoke for itself.
On cadre deployment, he said it was a misnomer that it was an “ANC thing”.
“Since 2009... there was very serious cadre deployment. They'd taken out all our director generals, at least 90 percent were taken out and replaced by people who would be loyal to the government in this province,” he said.
“As the leader of the ANC, I understand that, as long there is the capability of those to deliver. I'm saying it's clear to us that on the surface that capability exists but on the depth of it there is a dilemma.” - Sapa