JOHANNESBURG, A member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), Fikile Mbalula, says the party has warned its members of Parliament that disciplinary measures will be taken against those who vote with their conscience against the president when a motion of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma is tabled in the National Assembly.
“We will not withdraw our president from Parliament and we will not withdraw our President from the Executive. So all party members, in terms of ANC discipline, are supposed to follow that particular position. The extent to which people will be ill disciplined, the ANC will have to apply the disciplinary procedures for those who want to use their so-called conscience to determine the voting in Parliament,” he warned Monday.
If that were to occur, it would quite clearly have been against the decisions of the ANC, he said. “It is not a question of threatening people, it is a question of articulating the position of the ANC,” added Mbalula.
The ANC has also proposed a new way of minimising a jostle for leadership positions and factionalism during coming party elections. Factionalism and the bruising leadership contest have been singled out as some factors derailing the ANC from its core values.
The governing party, which is holding a national police conference here, wants the establishment of a Revolutionary Electoral Council comprising elders to oversee the election of members to different party structures.
Briefing the media on the party’s Organizational Renewal and Design, Mbalula said establishing a revolutionary electoral council would help fight factionalism each time the party elects a new leader.
Mbalula says they want a council that will identify who is fit to lead different structures of the ANC. “The revolutionary council will elect among the best in the ANC, not those who have retired themselves to the point in which that they are no longer interested to stand for leadership, not by age and and the revolutionary council is going to help us exorcise the tendency of factionalism and allow the issue of leadership of the ANC to be discussed in the open.”
Mbalula also said that the ANC was proposing that two thirds of its National Executive Committee (NEC) members should be allowed to serve in the government, adding that this would help the ANC intervene effectively where there are challenges.
Meanwhile as the Day 3 of the National Police Conference was underway Sunday with ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa telling journalists that so far all was going well in the ruling party’s closed-door sessions.
Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK