The groundwork ahead of the 2024 general elections has been laid, as the ANC concluded its provincial conference on Sunday with the election of former Dullah Omar regional secretary Vuyiso “JJ” Tyhalisisu emerging as the surprise provincial chairperson.
Tyhalisisu, who was nominated from the floor, trounced the party’s leader in the provincial legislature, Cameron Dugmore, by securing 311 votes against Dugmore’s 282.
Sharon Davids was elected as the provincial deputy chairperson after trouncing Lulama Mvimbi while former West Coast regional secretary Neville Delport snatched the provincial secretary position. Ayanda Bans was elected as the deputy provincial secretary while Derek Appeal was elected unopposed as the provincial treasurer.
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the closing address on Sunday night, saying the conference attendees had to critically reflect on the state of organisation in the province.
“This conference has had to be guided by the January 8 Statement, which was released by the NEC earlier this year.
“In explaining the roadmap 2032 we adopted at the 55th conference, we said central to the ANC roadmap is the understanding that the ANC will only succeed in realising its strategic objectives when it confronts its subjective weaknesses and successfully transforms itself into a renewed, responsive, modernised, well-governed, well-resourced, ethical, caring and effective political formation.
“We need to fix the problems inside the ANC so that we can more effectively work to address the challenges facing our people.”
Tyhalisisu said factionalism within the party needed to be dealt with.
“When we come out of this conference we must demobilise.
“Obviously, before the conference we campaigned and belonged to lobby groups, but that must come to an end as we leave the conference,” he said.
“It is us the leadership that must tell those whom we were with that it ends here and that this elected leadership is the leadership for all,” Tyhalisisu said.
He said working with the national executive committee (NEC) deployees, they would make sure that those who came from the “outside”, including but not limited to national leaders, did not have influence.
“It is going to be a long road, and not an event, to dismantle this as elective processes always produce caucuses and some become factions.
“It is work we must deal with. We must deal with it at the level of political education,” Thyhalisisu said.
Delport agreed with Tyhalisisu that they had belonged to lobby groups that should be disbanded now.
Tyhalisisu also said the elected provincial leaders would engage with deployees in municipalities, provincial legislature and parliament on how to play an effective opposition role.
“In many instances our comrades do not do that work in an effective way. It is a weakness that we accept as the movement but together as the political leadership and deployees must find a way.”
He said Delport would monitor and evaluate public representatives to understand the work they were doing.
Delport said they would make sure that ANC councillors, members of provincial legislature and MPs were grounded to respond to the needs of communities.
“We are living in a DA-led province and our people are still suffering a lot on farms. We are facing unemployment and several things in our rural regions,” he said.
“It is important for me that we must campaign against the DA in every single municipality. We won by-elections in the West Coast and Overberg regions against the DA.
People are getting tired of being used by the DA on election day and our people are still struggling with service delivery issues and therefore it was important that we have one message to the voters,” Delport said.
Director at the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University, Professor Zwelinzima Ndevu said: “The leadership that has been elected seems to represent a broader constituency of the ANC in Western Cape.
However the elected chairperson is associated with the decline in the metro region of the ANC, they have a big task of uniting the party in the province including developing a compelling vision for their leadership that focuses on the political agenda of developing poor communities.”
Cape Times