The newly-elected ANC Women’s League in the Western Cape said on Monday it would focus on rebuilding the organisation and uniting all women in the country.
The league convened an elective conference and elected new leadership in Cape Town after being without a formally elected leadership since 2008.
Other provinces such as Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and the Northern Cape held their conferences in recent weeks after the national elective conference in July where the mother body elected its leadership.
Speaking to the Cape Times, new chairperson Sindiswa Sambokwe said she was delighted that they finally held the conference in the Western Cape.
“I am relieved and happy that we no longer have a provincial task team (PTT) anymore,” Sambokwe said.
“We were the only structure in the Western Cape that did not have an elected leadership,” she said.
Sambokwe, who is a councillor in the Drakenstein District Municipality, was elected as the new provincial chairperson along with ANC chief whip in Theewaterskloof municipality Bongiwe Mkhwibiso as deputy chairperson.
Thozama Bevu was elected as the provincial secretary.
Connie Croates was voted in as deputy provincial secretary and Lumka Tamboer as the provincial treasurer.
Sambokwe said their immediate task was to bring unity in the Women’s League and ensure it was built on an on-going basis.
“There are foreign things that have come into the organisation and as the elected leaders we need to deal with them,” she said.
“We want to get rid of money that is being used to buy members,” she said.
“We need to focus on rebuilding the ANC Women’s League and unite all women not just within the ANC but in the whole of society,” she said.
Sambokwe also said as the new leadership, they would want to take charge in the fight against gender-based violence.
She said they would also build strong branches of the Women’s league and ensure that they revived membership in areas that were without structures.
“We don’t want our members and branches to lose their membership status,” she said, adding that they would come up with a programme for the entire province.
The ANC Women’s League has 300-odd potential branches in the Western Cape.
Only 166 branches were in good standing when the provincial conference was held at the weekend.
Sambokwe said as the 2024 elections were nearing, the women’s league would play an important role in increasing the ANC vote in the province.
“We as women want to rise above and claim the victory of women,” she said.
She also noted that communities were often forgetting what the ANC led government had done for them.
“We will come up with a strategy and compile the successes of the ANC government.”
Cape Times