Cape Town - The ANC might have been irked by the DA-run metro’s insistence that it pay R2.2 million in advance to secure the Cape Town Stadium for its biggest bash of the year on Saturday and issue tickets to supporters wanting to attend the event marking its 103rd birthday.
But President Jacob Zuma seemed unperturbed at the ANC’s gala dinner at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on Friday as he went on a charm offensive, urging business leaders and captains of industry to invest wisely by donating money to the ANC.
He told more than 1 500 business people – who paid thousands of rand for a place at the tables – and guests that pouring money into the ANC was a wise investment.
The party would not give figures, but it is understood that business leaders who sat at Zuma’s table paid almost R500 000 a seat.
Stand-up comedian Chris Mampane joked during an entertainment interlude that the business people at the back of the auditorium were in the cheap seats.
Getting down to the business of the evening, Zuma said the ANC was the oldest liberation movement in Africa, with a membership that included heads of state on the continent.
He told how, in 1912, a cross-section of leaders representing all South Africans had formed the ANC to oppose oppression and injustice.
Because of its sheer size and struggle credentials, no other party in South Africa could be equated to the ANC. Leaders of the ANC in the 1940s had predicted that the party would have a membership of one million by its centenary in 2012 – and the party had not only achieved this but exceeded it.
“This organisation must grow stronger and bigger. It must govern properly.”
For the ANC to succeed, business people should support it not only with their minds and hearts, but with their pockets.
“I am using a phrase business people are using: ‘You must invest wisely.’ If you are a business person you must invest in the ANC. I always appeal that just write one cheque, not two. Write figures, not more than six,” Zuma said, to enthusiastic applause.
Echoing him later, ANC treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize urged business people to “invest wisely” by donating to the party.
Zuma said although the DA in the metro had given his party problems in the build-up to its rally at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday, it was the ANC that ruled South Africa.
“We govern the country. Every province is governed by the ANC.”
This year was also the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at Kliptown, Soweto, and the party would celebrate this milestone.
Some people were hijacking the Freedom Charter, Zuma said. It was a living document of the ANC that had determined the path for a future South Africa.
Mkhize said the huge numbers of people who turned out for the ANC’s mini rally in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, on Thursday and its door-to-door campaign since Monday were evidence of the strength of support for the party in Western Cape.
Political Bureau