Statement of the African National Congress following National Working Committee Meeting held on the 28th July 2014
Since the 2014 Elections, the African National Congress has witnessed a massive change in Parliamentary politics. This change has been in both form and content and reflects the reconfiguration of the political forces in society. We are seeing two streams of politics; both characterised by religious opposition to any proposal made by the governing party, the African National Congress.
Whether the proposal makes sense or not, both the DA and the EFF have taken a position of adamant and dogmatic opposition to any proposal of the ANC. Indeed their interest is the same - that of delegitimising and weakening the ANC as a liberation movement with the intention to dislodge it.
The posture of the DA is not a new one and has been continuing for a number of years. We have defined it as the DA leading the anti-majoritarian liberal offensive on the ANC as a liberation movement. It uses the theme of values versus numbers instead of values and numbers. It is further underpinned by the strategy of taking every decision of the governing party to litigation with the aim to make it difficult for the legitimate government to govern.
South Africa has also witnessed the entering of a fascist movement into our parliamentary politics. This movement uses uniform to mobilise in the same way that Hitler used brown shirts in 1930s. The worrying factor in this regard is its use of anarchy and destruction as their modus operandi. This anarchy and destruction fits in to the paramilitary content of their strategy, which shows early signs of a rebel movement; designed and calculated to undermine democracy and state institutions.
The view of the National Working Committee is that in countering and dealing with these gutter politics, the ANC should avoid stooping to these low levels set and thus making it difficult for anyone to see the difference between these disruptive tendencies and our programme to create a better life for all. Instead the ANC should focus on the implementation of the programme that we had developed with and sold to the electorate. To this end, the NWC reaffirmed its commitment to the focused implementation of the Manifesto as summarised in the State of the Nation Address.
The ANC Manifesto of the 2014 General Elections had committed the ANC to strengthen service delivery and focus on local government. Since the elections, the National Working Committee has been visiting provinces in pursuance of this commitment. We have been meeting with ANC Councillors and ANC leadership structures with the intention to strengthen our work of serving the people. To date we have visited Limpopo, North West, Free State, Mpumalanga and parts of Gauteng. This coming weekend we will be visiting the Eastern Cape province.
The intention is to ensure that all ANC deployees move in the same direction and appreciate the importance of serving our people. ANC structures must work in unison in the furtherance of our electorate commitment. To this end, we strongly condemn actions such as the incidents at the Tshwane Regional Office yesterday and trust that our structures will urgently resolve the underlying issues that led to the conflict.
The African National Congress welcomes the settlement of the strike in the metal and engineering sector. We trust that all outstanding disagreements will soon be resolved in the interest of stability for both workers and the economy. It is necessary that a debate must ensue in society on how collectively we find a lasting solution to strikes that last too long and have a negative impact on the livelihood of workers and the economy. Such a debate must not be seen as an attack on worker's rights and an affront on the right to strike but rather an important step towards mitigating the negative effects of prolonged strikes on workers and the economy.
We have noted the start of the process to systematically hand back powers to the government of Limpopo following the Section 100 intervention instituted in 2012. We welcome this development understanding that it is part of rebuilding confidence of our people in our commitment to prudent financial management and accountable delivery in pursuit of a better life for all.
The ANC congratulates all athletes representing South Africa for their sterling performance thus far in the Commonwealth Games currently taking place in Glasgow. Sports continue to be a critical tool to build unity and cohesion in our country and we wish Team South Africa well as they continue to fly high our nation's flag.
Statement issued by Gwede Mantashe, ANC secretary general, July 29 2014
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