Durban - Ricardo Mthembu, the new spokesperson of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, says that members of the party need to accept the decisions of the party when it comes to deployment because ANC decisions were made for the benefit of the party.
Following the May 8 elections, Mthembu left his role as mayor of KwaDukuza Municipality, a position he had occupied for eight years, and was deployed to serve as a member of the provincial legislature. This despite many thinking he would get an MEC position.
However, he said that not being deployed as an MEC was a decision of the ANC that he could not question because it is the party that knows best where to deploy its own members in positions of leadership.
“If you can be disappointed by the decision of an organisation like the ANC I think you’re going to have a problem. The ANC is not mine, I am for the ANC so the ANC decides and maybe they didn’t deploy because they knew where they wanted me to go to. Now they’ve deployed me to be the spokesperson of the ANC.
“That’s how the ANC works and for us as members it’s to entrench the policies and the culture of the ANC so that we avoid getting disappointed by decisions taken by the party.
“For the ANC not to have any problems, its members need to teach themselves that now and again the ANC will take decisions that are favourable to you on one day and you’ll be happy, but you must also understand that the next day it can take a decision that is not favourable to you,” Mthembu said.
He said that his predecessor Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu, now the province’s Health MEC, had upped the game in representing the ANC and he needed to take over from where she had left off in making the ANC’s brand more visible in the public eye.
“It’s always a nice thing to get a deployment like this one from the African National Congress particularly because I grew up in the organisation. The organisation has deployed me a number of times because the ANC has many members and when you’re given such a serious responsibility to speak on behalf of the province, it is exciting.
“While it is exciting I’m also concerned about the responsibility on my shoulders because I must not disappoint the organisation,” Mthembu said.