THERE will be neither an early elective nor consultative conference for the ANC, party spokesman Zizi Kodwa said on Thursday.
Kodwa said secretary-general Gwede Mantashe had told a gathering this week that structures had rejected the idea of an early conference "out of hand".
The ANC Youth League had called for an early conference and party ally, the SA Communist Party, suggested that a consultative conference be held in the aftermath of the party’s eight percentage point drop in support in the 2016 local government election. It lost the prized metros of Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg and just managed to hold onto the Ekhurleni metro.
Zuma’s leadership of the party and his role in its election performance is also set to come under scrutiny at the party’s three-day national executive committee meeting that starts on Friday.
The ANC leadership traversed the country, discussing the party’s poor electoral performance with its members across the 53 ANC regions.
The ANCYL called for an early conference shortly after the election and also urged the party to avoid contestation by agreeing on who should lead the party ahead of the early gathering. The league’s call, however, did not gain traction in party structures.
While the ANC NEC had agreed to take "collective responsibility" for the decline, some party structures blamed Zuma, calling for him to step down. These calls were particularly strong in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng.
The SACP, after a meeting of its central committee, suggested that a consultative conference be held. This was also the suggestion of a group of ANC members who marched to the party’s headquarters to hand over a memorandum calling on Zuma to step down and for a consultative conference to be convened by party stalwarts.
As the NEC meets this weekend, universities across the country have been rocked by protests, many of which have turned violent and led to the destruction of property, but the matter is not a line item on its agenda. At the party’s August NEC meeting, it decided that the zero-fee increases at universities should remain in place — it subsequently welcomed the no-fee increase for poor students announced by Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande.
Since the ANC’s last NEC meeting, former party leaders and businessmen including former top government official Sipho Pityana and Sibanye Gold CE Neil Froneman, have also thrown their weight behind calls for Zuma to resign.
The ANC’s 2016 election bid was preceded by a damning Constitutional Court judgment against Zuma on Nkandla in which a full sitting of the court stopped short of finding that he violated his oath of office.
Two weeks ago, he abided by the court ruling and paid back about R7.8m to the fiscus for the "undue benefits" accrued to him and his family in the R250m upgrades to his private residence in Nkandla. The elections took place in a biting economic climate, worsened by Zuma’s removal of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December to unprecedented market retaliation. Zuma was forced to backtrack from his preferred candidate for the post, then MP Desmond van Rooyen, and reappointed Pravin Gordhan to the post he held from 2009 to 2014.
Kodwa dismissed on Thursday renewed rumours of another Cabinet reshuffle.
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