Former health minister Zweli Mkhize kicked off his campaign for the presidency of the ANC on Wednesday night promising to “fix the party”. He pulled no punches and called out the party’s leadership for failing to deliver on the people’s needs.
“We will no doubt have to wait for the formal processes. So far I have been approached by many regions in the province and it is a positive indication. A lot of support is coming from elected structures,” he told Business Day on Thursday, a day after addressing the party’s rank and file in the province.
He said although it was premature to talk about outcomes and the success of the nomination process, the branches and regions are backing him.
“The December conference represents the last significant opportunity to save our movement from this counterrevolutionary project. A divided ANC, and a poorly led ANC, disconnected from the people, cannot lead a project to transform the economy.”
On Wednesday, Mkhize spoke at an ANC branch meeting in Durban after he was nominated by that branch and other traditionally influential branches in the eThekwini region.
His address was seen as a show of defiance after calls by former president Jacob Zuma for KwaZulu-Natal to support co-operative governance & traditional affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
But he said the decision to run will be decided by the branches.
“President Zuma is a father figure who has contributed and sacrificed a lot for the ANC. He will always be accorded that respect.
“We meet regularly. We talk and we discuss a lot of issues together. He also has got a right to have a view on the matter and as a democrat [he] understands that these matters have to be debated and settled at conference,” he told Business Day.
Mkhize resigned as health minister in 2021 after being implicated in the Digital Vibes scandal and accused of wrongdoing by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in the awarding of a lucrative health department tender to a company linked to one of his close associates. He was also a presidential hopeful in 2017.
On Wednesday night, he used the legacy of Victoria Mxenge, a struggle icon and political activist who was gunned down at her home in Umlazi in 1985 by an apartheid government “death squad”, to call for unity within the party.
Throughout his speech, Mkhize highlighted the problem of factionalism in the ANC, saying it is the biggest obstacle to transforming the economy.
He urged members to make certain that at the end of December the “era of factions and the era of cabals running the organisation is a thing of the past”.
“If you have an organisation of factions and cabals it cannot create discipline within the organisation. Some of us are not seen as equals, it’s them and us.”
He condemned “tendencies to put pressure on others unashamedly and to eliminate political opponents through state-owned machinery like the ‘criminal justice system’.”
He told ANC members and leaders that the upcoming 55th national conference must be the opportunity to fix the ANC.
“It’s important for us to insist that delegates going to the conference in December must come back with a united ANC — and I am saying this because we have other challenges that we have to deal with.”
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