Ulundi - Still licking its elections wounds after losing eight seats in the KZN legislature, the ANC in the Mzala Nxumalo region (Zululand district) has stopped a branch in Ulundi from celebrating the party’s electoral victory, saying there is nothing to celebrate.
In a letter written on Wednesday and later leaked to Independent Media, the regional secretary, Zakhele Buthelezi, instructed the leadership of ward 12 (Asihlanganeni branch) in Ulundi in northern KZN, and which is led by Mlungisi Zungu, to stop the celebration.
Apparently the branch of the once deeply divided region had invited ANC provincial executive member, Mxolisi Kaunda, as their guest speaker and the region only got to know about this when invitations were issued for the bash that was planned for June 8, 2019.
“Revolutionary greetings, Note that the region did not approve the programme you are planning for the 8th June 2019. There are no celebrations that are going to take place where the performance of the ANC has actually declined. The region has undertaken to work with branches in rebuilding the ANC in those particular wards and will consult with the branch leadership in due course.
“In all your future planned programmes, you are advised to first liaise with the Regional Secretary before sending out invites to prospective deployees,” the brief letter signed by Buthelezi and throwing a spanner in the works reads in full.
Buthelezi confirmed the authenticity of the letter but insisted that it was an internal letter meant only for the branch in question. He further dismissed suggestions that the bash was stopped because the ward had invited Kaunda.
“We don't know about that. The reason we stopped it was because their performance was bad and there are wards that did well in the elections but are not celebrating and we cannot celebrate mediocrity,” Buthelezi said.
The ANC in the party had previously said it will not celebrate but sit down to analyse the results to see where things went wrong.