September 26 2011 at 09:44am By Moffet Mofokeng, The Sunday Independent ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has painted a bleak picture of the state of the ruling party throughout the country, pointing out that out of the nine provinces, the Free State was the worst.
In his 50-page State of the Organisation report, which he presented at last weekend’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting at St George’s Hotel outside Irene, south of Pretoria, Mantashe also stopped short of blocking Limpopo from holding its elective conference in December – six months before its term of office ended. Mantashe said that factionalism, infighting, suspicion and “gatekeeping” – a system where applications for membership were accepted on the basis of factional alignment – was rife in almost all the provinces. Membership in four provinces – Northern Cape, Western Cape, North West and Limpopo – has dropped since September last year. He said two provinces – KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State – were targeted for destabilisation while Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape were seen as drifting into crisis. The only blot for the party in Gauteng was Tshwane, where factionalism and ill-discipline continue to cause a great degree of instability in the ANC and the metro municipality. The dire problems in the provinces show that the ruling party would go to the 2012 elective conference in Mangaung, Free State, much more divided than it was in the run-up to the Polokwane conference in December 2007. Mantashe said in the Free State, not a single ANC branch was in good standing and that there were “simmering tensions” within the provincial executive committee. The Free State has 325 branches. The Sunday Independent has learnt, from ANC NEC members, that relations between Free State party chairman Ace Magashule and Sibongile Besani, the provincial secretary, soured as a result of the upcoming provincial conference and the December 2012 national elective conference. The source of the battle between Besani and Magashule is apparently that Besani is punted to take over from Magashule next year, and that he would support Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula to replace Mantashe, who has clashed with the ANC Youth League on many occasions. A member of the NEC confirmed the tension between Besani and Magashule. “There are people who are pushing Besani for chairman and that is fuelling the tension between the two because Ace does not think that it is correct for Besani to take over,” said the member. At last weekend’s meeting, where Mantashe tabled the report, Magashule disputed Mantashe’s comments. “He said there is no division. He said the SG (Mantashe) was not reflecting the correct report. Besani was quiet because he writes the reports to the SG and the SG presents the reports to the NEC,” the member said. But in the report, Mantashe said the Free State emerged from the local government elections “looking fragile, with lots of suspicions around the list processes”. “The lack of communication among the provincial officials has created space for mistrust and the general bad-mouthing of the leadership,” Mantashe said in the report, which The Sunday Independent saw this week. He said it was not wise for the ANC in Limpopo, which chose to hold its elective conference this December instead of June next year, to rush the event when the province has lost 18 000 members. “This decision can only be implemented if the province reverses the decline in membership and by ensuring that the number of branches in good standing is increased,” he said. “Otherwise, the conference will be a formality and would focus more on the election of the provincial leadership. The province has been asked to provide the head office with a concrete political programme that will ensure that the conference does all the business that is expected of a provincial conference.” In September last year, Limpopo had 101 971 members in its books and this figure dropped to 84 302 in June 2011. Out of the 549 branches in the province, 437 were not in good standing. Of the 185 branches in the Northern Cape, 27 were in good standing. In North West, which has 377 branches, 49 were in good standing. Gauteng has 153 branches in good standing out of 506. The Eastern Cape has 157 branches in good standing out of 725, Mpumalanga has 311 branches in good standing out of 435 and KZN has 352 in good standing out of 825. The audit of the Western Cape was not finalised when Mantashe presented his report. There are 4 316 ANC branches nationally and only 1 286 of them were in good standing. Since September 2010, the ANC’s membership grew from 621 237 to 914 852. KwaZulu-Natal has seen the biggest increase, which Mantashe set at 240 857. The Eastern Cape came in at second place, recruiting 222 724 members. Mpumalanga was third, with 98 351, followed by Gauteng, with 95 908, and Limpopo, whose membership dropped to 84 302. The Free State saw its membership grow to 70 415. However, the Northern Cape lost 567 members, the Western Cape lost 967, the North West 13 111 and Limpopo a whopping 18 000. “This is pointing to the general problem of provinces only taking the need for branches to be in good standing when there are conferences rather than ensuring that this is how the organisation should be,” he said. He said KZN found itself in a situation where it had to deal with the arrest of top officials in the province. “There were serious attempts to use the charges to divide the province, with suggestions that the charges are internally hatched. This mischief has been dismissed and the alliance is united in support of these comrades,” Mantashe said. On Friday, Besani said it was not true that the Free State did not have a single branch in good standing. “It (Mantashe’s report) needs some correction, but we are working on that. As the Free State, we do have challenges. “We are concerned that there is the re-emergence of factionalism in the province,” he said. ANC spokesman Keith Khoza refused to comment while Magashule, Limpopo provincial secretary Joe Maswanganyi and spokesman David Masondo could not be reached for comment yesterday. - Sunday Independent Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you! -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. 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