Johannesburg - ANC members and branches are divided on whether the party has done enough to resolve disputes on the nomination of candidates for the upcoming local government elections ahead of the Saturday registration deadline.
Last month, various ANC branches in most of the provinces in the country marched to their provincial headquarters and others marched to Luthuli House to lodge complaints about the alleged manipulation of candidates.
These marches took place a few days before the IEC’s initial deadline for registration of candidates on August 23.
However, after the Constitutional Court overturned the IEC’s application for election to be held in February next year, it also instructed the electoral body to organise another round of voter registration.
The Concourt also ordered the IEC to hold local government elections by November 1.
Due to the Concourt ruling, the IEC agreed to allow parties, including the ANC, another opportunity to register their candidates.
While ANC members have welcomed the idea, others including the SACP in the Eastern Cape have raised concern about the continued snubbing of their members.
In the North West, ANC regional and sub regions have expressed hope that their grievances on candidate manipulation were being resolved.
George Marindi said his ANC Moretele sub region in Hammanskraal appeared before the party liaison committee (PLO) this past weekend.
Marindi confirmed that they were awaiting the outcome of the meeting between the ANC North West under Hlomane Chauke, the PLO, ANC electoral chairperson Kgalema Motlanthe and deputy secretary Jessie Duarte to resolve their dispute after all their ward and public representative candidates were removed from the list.
He expressed hope that they would be given a positive outcome today.
Similar sentiments were echoed by the ANC regional executive committee of Ngaka Modiri Molema in Mahikeng.
In the North Cape, however, the ANC in the Sol Plaatje Municipality – the biggest in the province – is still riddled with dissatisfaction with the candidate list. Some of the aggrieved members, especially in Ritchie, outside Kimberley, registered as independent candidate a few hours before the registration deadline on August 23.
Other candidate councillors who were allegedly overlooked enlisted with the newly formed Sol Plaatje Service Delivery Forum, which is also contesting the upcoming elections now set to be held on November 1.
A similar situation is in Phokwane, in the towns of Jan Kempdorp, Ganspan, Pampierstad and Hartswater, where members also found Phokwane Service Delivery Forum and have registered to contest in nine of the 10 wards of Phokwane Local Municipality.
The forum also plans to support an Independent candidate who is contesting in ward 10.
In the Eastern Cape, the SACP provincial spokesperson Siyabonga Mdodi said their provincial executive committee members received a report of the list process on Sunday.
“The PEC meeting unanimously took a dim view with the manner in which the list process was handled and the extent to which Alliance structures were excluded from playing a meaningful role in the process.
“Among the key issues that received particular attention was the manner in which the list paid lip-service to academic capability, interviews and in some instances demonstrated gratuitous manipulation of lists.
“In this regard, the party supports the call made by alliance partners and the ANC that there is a need for investigation of some of the infractions related to the list process and calls for that process to leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of some of these problems,” Mdodi said.
However, Duarte has told the media that the ANC provincial executives in all nine provinces were attending to all the complaints and were expected to submit a final report to the top leadership on Sunday.
Aggrieved ANC branches have until Saturday to lodge their grievances.
baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za
Political Bureau