Johannesburg - Former president Jacob Zuma has warned ANC supporters that the party may not perform well in the upcoming elections if they continued to be complacent about the size of the party.
Zuma was speaking in Bekkersdal, west of Johannesburg, where he was campaigning for the ANC ahead of the general elections in May.
“People, particularly members of the ANC and supporters, must not be complacent because we are big and we have been winning since 1994.
“It is important that the votes of the ANC must grow all the time because the vote is the power. If your majority is small, the level of difference that you make is very small,” he said.
Zuma - who was flanked by ANC acting spokesperson Dakota Legoete and other Gauteng leaders - appealed to party supporters to vote the ANC back into power if they were serious about life and real change.
“If you are a South African who is serious about life, you can’t not vote for the ANC.
“If you don’t vote for the ANC it means you are not serious about life. All parties have manifestos but if you notice, no party releases its manifesto before the ANC.
“All of them want to first know what the ANC is saying and then they copy and add,” Zuma said.
Bekkersdal is the township in which current Environmental Affairs Minister Nomvula Mokonyane - then Gauteng premier - told protesting community members in 2013 that the ANC did not need their “dirty votes” ahead of the 2014 general elections.
Zuma told residents of the Winnie Mandela informal settlement that the ANC would not be able to fulfil all its electoral promises if it did not win the upcoming elections overwhelmingly.
Today as part of my deployment by the ANC to the West Rand region I visited the Methodist Church, addressed the community of Winnie Mandela informal settlement, did blitzes & door to door, encouraging everyone to go and check the voters roll to ensure that they are registered pic.twitter.com/o6Fbvyl4Nd
— Jacob G Zuma (@PresJGZuma) January 27, 2019
“The ANC will need to get a two-thirds majority in order to change things.
“There are still laws that have not been changed properly which are holding us back.
“There are sections even in the Constitution that are still holding us back and that must be changed in order to achieve transformation,” he said.
Zuma also defended the ANC’s shortcomings in government, saying it was not realistic to expect the party to transform the country within 25 years.
“You can’t expect the ANC to fix a country that was damaged for centuries within 25 years, even if you are a magician.
“When you hear us talking about radical economic transformation, those are some of the efforts to make things change faster,” Zuma said.
Zuma’s visit to Gauteng comes as the party is still battling to address internal disunity.
He said he was happy with how the party was managing to put on a united front and get rid of factional battles.
“When we came out of the (Nasrec) conference, we talked about unity and we have been working for unity and we are working together.
“I think supporters should see that,” he said.