The largest party in the government of national unity (GNU), the ANC, is this week holding its national general council (NGC) in Ekurhuleni. The gathering is held every five years and serves as mid-term review of the party programme and policies 2½ years after the election of its incumbent leadership at the last national conference. This year’s meeting is the first such gathering where party branches from across the country have the opportunity to meet face-to-face since the ANC suffered heavy losses during the last general elections.
It is therefore expected to be heated, with branch delegates seeking to hold President Cyril Ramaphosa and the national executive committee accountable for the poor performance — which forced the ANC to go into coalition government at national level as well as in two provinces. While the governing party and its members have every right to spend time examining their internal issues, we hope that delegates do not lose sight of the general crises that face the country and need urgent attention. Therefore, it still has the most potential to lift the country out of the morass SA finds itself in or plunge the republic into further trouble.
Hence our hope is that the party will use the next four days to seriously reflect on the role it can play to sway SA away from a path that, most people fear, is taking us towards becoming a mafia state — where criminal gangs run amok with absolute impunity. The assassination of Marius “Vlam” van der Merwe, who testified as “Witness D” at the Madlanga commission, has seriously shaken citizens’ confidence in the security services and their ability to protect the country from organised criminality. Considering that the ANC is still going to have much of the say on how policing is run, at least until the 2029 elections, we can only hope that delegates at the NGC will devote much of their time on measures that should be taken to strengthen the SA Police Service and insulate its top management from infiltration by criminal gangs.
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