The renewal of the African National Congress (ANC) to win back the support of the people will depend on improving the quality of its membership.
This is the message former President Thabo Mbeki delivered to structures of the party in Gauteng, on the final day of the ANC Renewal Workshop that took place this weekend in Boksburg on Johannesburg’s East Rand.
Mbeki acknowledged that the party has over the years attracted careerists and criminals and the need exists to audit the membership and consider the possibility that there be re-application by existing members.
“Does the ANC cease to be a mass-based organisation if it has 500 000 members as opposed to a million in terms of quality, what is the difference between 500 000 and a million because obviously I can imagine a process where all of us renew our membership by applying. I don’t think it would result in a mass exclusion of this membership so that it ceases to retain its mass character.”
Mbeki has also urged deployees of the ANC at all levels of government to use the power at their disposal to win back the confidence of the people.
He says that the ANC needs to focus on strengthening itself and service delivery; to claw back from the 40-percent support it received nationally in the May 2024 elections.
“To win back that support is to address those issues that I know that the provincial leadership did its own research before the elections identified the challenges facing us, electricity, crime and so on. This is to say let us make sure that we use the capacity we have in those areas of state power is in our hands to address the matters that were identified in our research.”
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