The ANC convened its mid-term review gathering in Boksburg this week, where thousands of delegates are to assess progress in implementing the party’s resolutions from the last conference. According to the party, the 5th national general council is a strategic moment for self-reflection, correction, and renewal to ensure it remains “the movement of the people”. There has been speculation about the possible push for President Cyril Ramaphosa to step down as party leader, discussions about loss of voter support in last year’s elections, long speeches and policy proposals.
Not much has been made about the state of the party’s finances except in interviews by some of its top seven leaders in the run-up to the conference, who bemoaned the current party funding legislation for its perilous state. On Monday, however, as the party prepared to begin the conference proceedings, a group of employees from Luthuli House, the party’s Joburg headquarters, protested outside the venue over their unpaid salaries. In a letter to staff last week, ANC general manager Febe Potgieter told them that their outstanding salaries dating as far back as July would not be paid.
Such is the parlous state of the ANC’s finances that it has not been able to pay salaries for consecutive months. So broke and broken is the ANC that it has been struggling to pay a tax bill from pay-as-you-earn deductions it made from its employees’ monthly pay. According to reports, the party now owes Sars well over R80m in unpaid staff deductions.
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So how can this political party that is struggling to take care of the well-being of its own employees — whose numbers pale in comparison to SA’s citizens — expect the public to trust it to run the country well? The ANC and its leaders, who are gathered in Boksburg, have treated the staff salary payment problems as insignificant, yet their attitude towards their workers reveals a lot about their fitness to govern this country. The party’s loss of voter support was not an overnight event but a slow burn of its failures, including a lack of compassion for the plight of the workers.
If ever there was a moment for reflection by the party delegates on the state of their party, that moment was on Monday when ANC workers held placards pleading for their pay. Until then, the ANC can convene as many conferences as it likes to search for answers in the dark about its decline, but it will not succeed in regaining public trust.
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