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W Cape ANC calls for unity
06/10/2008 17:31 - (SA)
Cape Town - The Western Cape ANC on Monday played down the prospect of disciplinary action against disgruntled members, instead calling for unity.
"We are not in the business of looking at purging people," provincial chairperson Mcebisi Skwatsha told a media briefing in Cape Town.
"What we are saying as a new leadership, we want to extend a hand of friendship to all."
Two weeks ago a substantial number of delegates boycotted the party's provincial conference in the city centre, staging an alternative meeting in the township of Langa.
The group has since held a follow up meeting.
The provincial conference resolved to disband the executive of the Dullah Omar region, the largest in the province, that includes the Cape metro.
Skwatsha said on Monday the provincial executive (PEC) had not taken a decision on removing the leader of the Langa group, Mbulelo Ncedana, from his position as a proportional representation councillor in Cape Town.
Nor did he know whether it would.
Ncedana was also secretary of Dullah Omar.
"It's difficult for us to say what's happening in Langa, to say this constitutes disciplinary action or not, because we've not had an opportunity to sit down with the people and say what's going on there," Skwatsha said.
He said PEC officials would meet councillors of Dullah Omar region on Wednesday to inform them of the dissolution of the regional executive, then meet the executive itself, to tell it the same thing, before Saturday.
Skwatsha said the newly elected provincial executive was firmly resolved to ensure the ANC won next year's general election in the province and remained a united organisation.
"We would like to make sure... as a new leadership [that] everybody feels at home in the ANC, including those that had other views in relation to how the leadership should look like.
"They had every right to think that Skwatsha is not the right person to be chairperson.
"As a new leadership we ought to defend the right they had, as a democratic organisation....
"We're not going to be looking around, you know, trying to look and sniff who to discipline.
"If there are violations we will consider those things. But really our purpose is to unite the ANC, to make the ANC elections-ready."
He said the PEC would be quite happy if Dullah Omar re-elected the same executive, because democracy would have been allowed to take its course.
Provincial secretary Sipho Kroma said 216 branches had been expected at the provincial conference. Of those, 157 attended, and 59 were "not present".
- SAPA
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