Mangaung 'not just about elections'
2012-12-14 09:01
Video
2012-12-14 08:51
ANC leaders and supporters have always used song and dance to lobby for votes or show solidarity. Watch.WATCH
Johannesburg - The ANC's 53rd national conference is not
just about choosing leaders, the party's secretary general Gwede Mantashe said
on Friday.
"This is not a conference about electing leadership as
it is projected," Mantashe said at a business briefing by The New Age,
which was broadcast live on SABC2.
It is a conference about "grappling" with policies
and putting together a leadership that will grapple with those polices, he
said.
ANC policy head Jeff Radebe said the outcome of the
conference would affect society as a whole.
Mantashe said the organisation was tightly-knit during the
struggle against apartheid, but that once things opened up,
"mosquitoes" with different objectives had started treating elections
as life and death struggles.
Radebe said the conference would remove the "rotten
elements", and keep those who put the ANC first and not themselves.
- SAPA