Cape Town - ANC National Executive Committee member Ronald Lamola has called for unity in the party as structures are preparing to hold provincial conferences.
The ANC has said the provinces must hold conferences by July. This will be in time for the national conference in December.
Lamola told the OR Tambo Memorial Lecture in Vhembe in Limpopo on Saturday that ANC members had a responsibility to ensure the party held peaceful conferences and not to kill each other.
Leaders who would be elected in those provincial conferences had to be accepted by all sides, irrespective of the position a member held prior to the conference.
He urged ANC members not to kill each other for positions.
“We must not kill each other for positions. We must not tear apart the ANC because of positions. But contestation is within the Constitution.
“Let’s do it in a manner that still after the provincial conference you will get out of the provincial conference of the ANC and still love each other as delegates and not leave the provincial conference where you cannot even greet your neighbour who is a delegate to the same provincial conference,” said Lamola.
He said there should be no animosity among ANC members before and after a provincial conference.
“After the provincial conference, we must see you shaking hands like people who went to a soccer match. In a soccer match you know before it starts that there will be a winner. Hence, after the game they greet each other and accept the outcome,” he said.
He said this must be the spirit in which ANC members demonstrated at conferences.
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