The internal war faced by the ANC, with members destroying the party from the inside, needs to be addressed.
This is according to ANC Nelson Mandela Bay regional task team convener Nceba Faku, who was speaking at the commemoration of the party’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), at the Zwide cemetery on Sunday.
“Today, we are afraid of our own comrades,” Faku said.
“We deal better with the DA and the opposition but we can’t be honest with ourselves that our comrades are destroying the ANC from within.”
Faku said it was important for dates such as December 16 – with the armed wing formed on this day in 1961– to be commemorated.
He said the apartheid government and the Central Intelligence Agency in the US failed to destroy the ANC but it was ironic that party members were actively doing so today.
“They are wanting to achieve what the CIA could not and we are seeing the scars.”
Since the ANC’s Eastern Cape regional executive committee (REC) was disbanded in October with the task team taking over weeks later, several branch leaders and party members in the city refused to allow the interim structure to function and even closed down the regional headquarters, Florence Matomela House, in November.
Supporters of the disbanded REC wrote to the national executive committee demanding they be addressed and given reasons for the disbandment.
The group threatened to not take part in any election campaigning and that the party’s Nelson Mandela Bay headquarters would remain shut if their demands were not met.
Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) regional chair Phakamile Ximiya said the shutdown of Florence Matomela House was simply due to anarchy.
Ximiya said the group responsible for the closure was small compared with the number of people who wanted the ANC office open.
“It’s been weeks, if not months, since that office was closed. Before the REC was disbanded the veterans league went to it to find out what was happening,” he said.
“This veterans league went to Calata House [the ANC’s provincial office] when the REC was disbanded but at the end of the day we respect the decision of the provincial executive committee because that is the way of the ANC.
“When the above structure makes a decision, everyone else falls in line,” Ximiya said.
Speaking on rooting out corruption and looting within the ANC, the veterans association provincial task team chair Thobile Mhlahlo said when members said former president Jacob Zuma was an “anarchist” they were offering commentary based on analysis.
“By not speaking out you’re destroying the revolution.”
Mhlahlo said the ANC should distance itself from “questionable comrades” and the ousting of corrupt members should become the norm.