“Today in our country there is a convergence of forces who share a common short term goal, which is to remove President Jacob Zuma and the ANC, but do not share a common objective on what happens in the aftermath,” said KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial chairperson, Sihle Zikalala, on Sunday.

Zikalala was speaking at the closing of the provincial general council held at the University of Zululand near eMpangeni in the Musa Dladla Region.

Zikalala said: “Placing any trust on them [the forces] is a very serious risk for the future of the people and that of generations to come. Therefore, being a member and a cadre of the movement requires people who are constantly engaged in a study of the revolution, factors that influence it and the role of revolutionaries to shape it in the best interests of our revolutionary cause.”

He told branch delegates that they needed to pay attention to the state of the organisation and avoid the temptation of allowing individual conduct and desire to tarnish the image of the ANC.

Zikalala said its members should refrain from depicting the ANC as a self-serving movement.

“We should also never fall prey into a fallacy of thinking that the ANC is immune from natural processes that characterises any society.  All societies do not consist of things, but of processes that brings things into and out of being. This is a dialectical relationship between the cause and effects in society.”

He told members not to lose hope during the party’s difficult time.

On the struggle for radical economic transformation, Zikalala said: “The oppressor is uncomfortable with the project of radical economic transformation which is an immediate agenda and plight for the oppressed class, as represented by the ANC.

“This is a permanent war which President Jacob Zuma aptly referred to during his address to this Provincial General Council.”

Economic warfare

He said because of this unending and uninterrupted battle, “an economic warfare has been unleashed against the ANC and its government – hence our economy has been put into junk status by the rating agencies.”

“We understand this to be an economic warfare because the decisions to downgrade the economy of our country were taken not on the basis of the soundness of our economic policies but on political considerations after the president exercised his constitutional prerogative to re-constitute the cabinet.”

He said the province was now ready to present its policy position at the party's National Policy Conference.

Some of the key proposals and resolutions taken during the PGC include strengthening the party’s unity.

The province said it affirmed the importance of land redistribution without compensation, the necessity to advance radical transformation and that it supports that the party’s constitution to include the position of two deputy secretaries, one responsible for monitoring, evaluation and research and another for organisation building and campaigns.

On the succession battle, the province said it did not subscribe to the notion that the deputy president should automatically become the president.

“If it was so, there would be no need for elections,” said Zikalala

News24