ANC battle 'only starting'

2007-12-21 09:21

Polokwane - The battle in the African National Congress would only now get underway, political analysts said on Thursday as the party's Polokwane conference ground to a close.

"The struggle is only starting," said Wits University political analyst Professor Susan Booysen.

"It is incontrovertible... any attempt to play it down is part of the process of coming to grips with it."

The immediate challenge for the party, which emerges with an entirely new top leadership, was to "try and insert a means toward unity" and to deepen cohesion within the movement.

In his address on Thursday Zuma said: "Comrades and friends, we are proud of the fact that we are emerging from Polokwane stronger and ready to heal and unite the ANC and face the present and the future with greater vigour.

"There cannot be a Zuma camp nor an Mbeki camp."

Must not repeat mistakes

Institute for Democracy in SA researcher Steven Friedman agreed that the battle was far from over. People had been fixated on the top six positions but had ignored the importance of the national executive committee, voted for on Wednesday.

He said it was important for the new party leadership not to repeat the former's mistakes; everyone had to feel included as the party headed toward the country's general election in 2009.

The new leadership should ensure the 42% who voted for Mbeki that they were as much a part of the party as the 58% who did not.

This may prove difficult. As one delegate said as she prepared to leave the university on Thursday: "I am not happy about the results. I don't accept it. I will never accept it."

She said when the announcement of Zuma's victory sounded, she only thought about her children.

"What kind of ANC will they be part off?"

Another delegate said: "I don't even want to talk about this conference, it was disappointing."

Another delegate, who was happier about the election outcome, said the solution lay in remaining disciplined as members of the party.

"The leaders have been elected democratically - and now we have to be disciplined to our leaders when they talk," he said.

Sexwale plays down rift

An incumbent Zuma supporter and a man who had once had the top job in his sights too, Tokyo Sexwale, on Thursday, however, played down the rift caused by the former president Thabo Mbeki and Zuma jostling for the party's leadership.

"That's what elections are about, someone is going to win, someone is going to lose. Now, we are not divided philosophically - there is no policy division and no vision division.

"There were strong feelings; you will find them anywhere else in the world. This is not an ANC unique thing. What makes it unique today is South Africa is seeing it for the first time," he said.

Sexwale said "we should be mature" as every country in the world differed about their choice of leadership.

"When we came here you saw the emotions, you saw the heckling, you saw everything, it's all gone," he said - referring to tension at the outset of the conference which saw Zuma supporters undermining former national chairperson and Mbeki man Mosiuoa Lekota.

- SAPA