POLITICAL INPUT BY THE PROVINCIAL CHAIRPERSON TO THE ORDINARY PEC MEETING

Posted on March 26, 2023 by ANC Eastern Cape

Deputy Chairperson, Cde Mlungisi Mvoko

The NEC Deployees present

The Provincial Executive Committee as a whole

Comrades,

Let me start by welcoming all of you PEC and NEC . We always appreciate present of the NEC members in our midst for guidance , support and leadership . In welcoming all of you , let me also take the opportunity to congratulate cde Princes Faku an ex officio member of this PEC , The regional Chair of Dr. R.W.B Rubusana for being elected as a new Executive Mayor of BCM. She has been competently deployed there having gone through the due process of our organisation. We are happy to see young female cdes rising to the occasion , she is indeed fit for the purpose and we wish her all best in leading the only metro anc won convincingly.

We have convened this PEC meeting in Winnie Madikizela Mandela subregion as part of our organizational visit to Alfred Nzo Region. This is a second region to be visited by PEC on this program action we adopted this year. Part of this visit is to revive the structures of the organisation in this part of the province, keeping true to our provincial and national conference resolutions to strengthen branches on the ground as the most vital element of our interaction with the people.

In that context, we have a duty to recall some significant historical developments that have shaped South Africa’s political history in this part of the province. This includes the central role of Mbizana in the unfolding of the Pondo revolt of 1959 and 1960.

The uprising of the Mpondo people against the Apartheid government around the imposition of the Bantu Administration Act was a major development in the struggle against oppression. In our unwavering commitment to renew ANC, we would like to rekindle our connection with the undying spirits of these martyrs of the Pondo revolt; to inspire us to be relentless on the work we are doing in renewing the movement of our people. When the PEC is here, we must remember these unsung heroes: u tatu’ Mbambeni Madikizela, Anderson Ganyile, utata u Mdingi namanye amaqhawe namaqhawekazi.

We must also congratulate the Winnie-Madikizela Mandela Local municipality on its impressive achievement of a clean audit outcome. This rural municipality, under the leadership of the ANC, is emerging as an exemplary institution on the management of public funds. We now have a duty to reinforce this positive administrative performance with significant advances in Local Economic Development

Already, we have mobilised significant infrastructure investment around the construction of the Mtentu bridge and all road packages SANRAL that has awarded. This robust road network infrastructure has major potential to transform not only this region but the entire spatial profile of the Eastern Cape’s economic corridors.

This could be easily understood when we relate it the outstanding economic potential of the Xolobeni mining area. The exploration of mining in Xolobeni, successfully done, will raise the economic capabilities of this part of the country and break the backbone of the migrant labour system that has sustained the South African minerals-energy complex through a cheap labour pipeline drawn from this part of the country.

However, there are serious threats to successful economic development that have also emerged from this region. We as the ANC must actively condemn the emergence of this negative phenomenon of vigilante groupings, self-styled as Madelangokubona, who hijack public infrastructure projects at gunpoint demanding rents and the so-called protection fee. If we allow this tendency to entrench itself as an acceptable practice of determining the allocation of public contracts, we will lose the capacity to lead this country.

A similar challenge is with the Taxi Industry. Early in the week we woke up to reports that critical road arteries in the province such as the N2 had been blockaded by members of the Taxi Industry. This is the latest incident in what has become a pattern of disruptive behavior, usually accompanied by threats of violence. In this regard, the ANC must discuss seriously what is a growing criminalization of the Taxi industry by armed people who use violence as bargaining power in matter of public policy.

Comrades, we are also meeting here during an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Port St John’s. This coastal town has once again been hit by torrential rainfall that has caused major floods which have devastated both public infrastructure and people’s homes. This is a 3rd consecutive disaster in PSJ, adding to other active disasters we are still grappling with in the entire Province.

We have already been in contact with national government in mobilizing a rapid disaster response plan for the town. The President of the Republic, Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa, is likely to visit Port St John’s on Tuesday, 28 March 2023, as part of a national government response to this crisis.

1. Organizational Context

Comrades, this is our first ordinary Provincial Executive Committee meeting following a series of special meetings during the year 2023. This also makes it the first ordinary meeting of the Provincial Executive Committee following the 55th ANC National Conference held in Nasrec from 16-20 December 2022. In part, therefore, this PEC meeting must reflect on the political and organizational significance of both the processes and outcomes of the 55th National Conference in the prosecution of the national democratic revolution.

The 55th National Conference focused a great deal on the question of organisational renewal. The central perspective of this renewal is the restoration of the relationship of the ANC with the people as their most reliable driver of progressive social change and, importantly, the restoration of the historic values of service to the people, self-sacrifice, honesty, integrity and a defeat of factionalism within our ranks.

The conference further affirmed the tasks of the organization, amongst others, to be the following:

a. To win and use state power to achieve our goals and better the lives of the people. To make policies, win broad support for them, implement them through the state, and monitor implementation and the impact on our people and on transformation.

b. To develop cadres, schooled in our values and policies, with the capacity to be agents of change wherever they are deployed.

c. To establish centres to be used to report service delivery issues and crises, and to mobilise government to respond to community problems.

d. Identify challenges on the ground by engaging with people and respond by mobilising society and the state in solving these challenges.

e. Develop a clear plan to communicate both government and organisational work and interventions.

f. Develop a clear plan in all branches and the subcommittee to i) renew relationships with all sectors in the community ii) conduct sectoral work in an organised manner and to involve all key sectors and alliance partners in all activities.

g. Conduct trainings for all structures of the organisation, inclusive of public representatives.

h. Work with PCOs to unite and educate people about the values, vision, challenges, tasks and key actions of the organisation.

i. Build active branches and ensure that they have monitorable programmes.

j. Asses the state of structures and develop a clear plan to deal with challenges facing branches.

k. Develop an elections strategy

l. Prioritise the conferences of Leagues to ensure a fully functional organisational machinery

Therefore, this PEC meeting has a duty to reflect on these critical political and organizational tasks arising out of the 55th National Conference. Our objective must be to map out a clear programme of action broadly to achieve the organizational renewal of the ANC and to ensure the movement’s electoral victory in the 2024 General Elections as a critical platform to advance the aims and objectives of the ANC in prosecuting the national democratic revolution.

Our context, however, is also informed by the existing decisions of the NEC in elaborating the resolutions of the 55th National Conference into a national programme of action. Specifically, the political analysis and line of march arising out of the January 8th Statement are instructive. This includes the programmatic elaboration of the NEC Lekgotla that took place shortly after the January 8th Rally of the ANC.

In this regard, the NEC through the January 8th Statement has called on all of us as ANC members and structures to focus our collective attention for this year -2023- towards decisive action to advance the people’s interest. This is because, the NEC correctly argues, it is through a viable and decisive action plan to advance the interests of the people that we can restore their faith in the ANC and secure their continued support for the goals of the national democratic revolution.

Furthermore, the National Executive Committee identified five strategic priorities that must underpin our programme of decisive action to advance the people’s interests. These priorities were defined as:

i. specific initiatives and programmes to deepen the Renewal of the ANC;

ii. accelerate the resolution of the energy crisis to end load-shedding;

iii. boldly mobilise social partners around economic reconstruction and recovery in order increase job creation, investment and empowerment;

iv. improve delivery of basic services and maintaining infrastructure;

v. strengthen the fight against crime and corruption;

vi. action to build a better Africa and world.

2. The National Balance of Forces

The political situation domestically has brought up some important developments that require the collective attention of this PEC. These developments derive from and inform important elements of the national balance of forces.

Firstly, we are all aware that there was a broad mobilisation for a National Shutdown on 20 March 2023. The basis of this mobilisation as outlined by its protagonists relates to the national energy crisis of loadshedding, the high levels of unemployment and the challenges of service delivery.

By design, therefore, this was a mobilization against the ANC and its government as the main cause of all these. It was principally a mobilisation of the people around commonly accepted national challenges but underpinned by a regime change objective on the part of the political forces leading the charge.

Of course, the objectives of the campaign were not realised. The intended mass action did not come to be. Instead, it became a strictly partisan campaign of identifiable opposition parties. They could not inspire the imagined mass uprising of the people, specifically committing themselves to a regime change goal against the ANC.

The failure of this recent campaign notwithstanding, it must still be borne in mind that the efforts at regime change have not died. Instead, they will continue to be pursued in various ways; including non-insurrectionary ones. The most important of such ways is to mobilise for the electoral defeat of the ANC.

There is a growing psychological warfare being waged on the movement in preparation for the election. This is in the form of the repeated framing of the 2024 elections as obviously moving towards coalition government. This perspective is canvassed openly in news platforms and talk radio programmes on overdrive every day.

This propaganda principally suggests that the ANC will certainly not win an outright majority nationally and in various provinces. Whilst it is being presented as objective analysis, it is in fact an act of psychological cultivation of public imagination to slowly accept this untested claim as a fact of life. The aim, therefore, of this propaganda drive is to tilt the balance of forces against the ANC and dislodge it as the dominant political forces in charge of national affairs.

Once again, the central justification for this purported loss of an outright majority by the ANC are the same talking points about Loadshedding, high unemployment, service delivery and corruption. It is therefore clear that these issues are central mobilising points for both the left and right-wing opponents of the ANC, including their media spokespersons.

It is therefore critical that we reflect on the work that has been achieved, objectively speaking, in the first quarter of this year in dealing with these key talking points of especially loadshedding and economic performance. We have to reflect on this progress based on an assessment of the work done in line with the programme outlined in the January 8th Statement and the February NEC Lekgotla.

i. Loadshedding

Firstly, the February ANC NEC Lekgotla adopted a concrete Energy Action Plan specifically to respond to the problem of loadshedding. The main thrust of the energy action plan was to declare a national state of disaster, focus on improving the performance of our existing coal-fired power stations, get government to intervene in the Eskom debt and to procure additional power from neighboring countries.

Accordingly, the President announced in the State of the Nation Address that a national state of disaster would be declared. This has come to pass. The President also announced some administrative reforms at the level of government, including the appointment of a temporary Minister of Electricity to coordinate work on loadshedding, which have also come to pass.

These announcements by the President were supplemented by a move by National Treasury to take up two-thirds of Eskom’s debt to the value of R254 billion, as announcement by the Minister of Finance during the Budget Speech. Importantly, this debt relief package was structured to include specific allocations to infrastructure rehabilitation that would help reduce the causes of loadshedding.

As we convene here today, loadshedding has been significantly reduced. What had become a disastrous norm of 6 hours without lights everyday (Stage 6) have gone down to between 2-3 hours of loadshedding (stages 2 and 3). This also saw a three-day period of zero power cuts from 17-19 March. The specific cause of this development is improved performance of six power stations which are all performing at above 70% of their potential.

However, there has been a misguided weakness on our part to relate this improvement to a successful execution of our own Energy Action Plan as adopted at the February NEC Lekgotla. The negative commentariat in the media and elsewhere has peddled a disinformation campaign to the effect that the three-day period of zero power cuts from 17-19 March was supposedly a panicked response to the purported National Shutdown intended by opposition parties for 20 March 2023.

This is even though Eskom had released a statement on 3 March 2023 that improvements in plant performance due to their maintenance plan already indicated that by 31 March 2022 our Energy Availability Factor would have significantly improved. In that context, the three-day period of zero power cuts from 17-19 March was a natural outcome of that gradual progress.

It is important to reflect on these matters to stress the point that we have a duty to improve our participation in the battle of ideas in defense of the national democratic revolution. To allow misinformation to go on overdrive without challenge is to weaken the fighting capacity of the movement and to narrow down the possibility of the national democratic revolution to be victorious.

ii. Economic Performance

In terms of economic growth and employment creation, there has been a contradictory trend of progress and reversals. South Africa’s economy grew by an estimated 2.5 per cent in 2022. As part of that growth framework, the Eastern Cape reported a third consecutive decrease in unemployment in the province as stated in the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the fourth quarter of 2022.

The Quarterly Labour Force Survey reflects that the number of employed people increased by approximately 20 000 in the Eastern Cape Province, which has been a continuing trend since the beginning of 2020. In terms of the report, the unemployment rate in the Eastern Cape dropped drastically from 47.9% in Quarter 4 of 2020 to 42.1% in Quarter 4 of 2022. However, the rate (42.1%) remains the highest in the country, and it is above the national level of 32.7%.

Nonetheless, the drastic drop should be viewed as a watershed moment for the province as it demonstrates that the ANC Provincial government led interventions in the province are bearing fruits and gives a sense of hope that more positive change is yet to come. Of course, more measures need to be taken to ensure we reach greater meaningful heights.

Ours is to ensure that young people and the citizens in the province realise their true potential and become the true catalyst to enforce intentional change in the home of legends. We need to ensure more bearers of advancement who will build a secured and prosperous Eastern Cape.

On the contradictory side, the South African economy declined by 1,3% in the fourth quarter (October?December). Growth was dragged lower mainly by finance, trade, mining, agriculture, manufacturing and general government services.

This challenges us to have a much more activist economic recovery plan for the remainder of the year. We need serious economic interventions that can yield jobs in especially construction, mining, agriculture and the retail sector as critical growth points. Our ability to engage with the public in a manner that gives confidence that the ANC can intervene on their issues rests critically on this issue of job creation.

iii. What impact do our strides on the two issues above have?

In the sections above, we reflected on the propaganda drive to project the ANC as guaranteed to perform below 50% at next year’s election. However, against this grain of counter mobilisation targeting the ANC, and in no small measure informed by recent improvements in especially loadshedding; recent polling data reveals that the ANC may actually perform better now than it was expected to 8 months ago.

Of course, we read these polls with a 4% margin of error as a statistical technique. Furthermore, the viability of these poll depends on our ability to accelerate progress on especially tackling the energy crises that causes loadshedding. The instructive fact to extract from this poll is that we must not wallow in the propaganda of our inevitable fall from power.

Similarly, we must be galvanised to improve our performance in the delivery of a better life for all the people of our country. We as the ANC must accelerate progress on the work we have done so far to deliver quality economic outcomes through increased employment, improve the state of our infrastructure such as roads, water and sanitation services and also politically challenge the dominant narrative that the ANC has run its course and therefore has nothing to offer the people of this country.

In general, the strategic objective of the ANC remains the liberation of blacks in general, and Africans in particular, from the multi-layered legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This translates into the creation of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, and prosperous society. This is the strategic thrust of the political programme we define as the national democratic revolution.

As part of this programme of national democratic revolution, the ANC has always believed that the livelihoods of all persons can be guaranteed in a fair pursuit of development that is structured by a democratic developmental state. The task of this developmental state, for the purpose of our revolutionary objectives, is to harness our national resources for shared development.

This specifically includes the strategic capacity to define the terms of national development, intervene in the economy to inform outcomes of shared growth and prosperity as well as the strategic task of mobilizing all social forces to play their defined roles in this process of national democratic progress.

Critical to this process, therefore, is a correct understanding of the political and social forces that can genuinely support this programme of national democratic revolution. This includes maximizing the electoral performance of the ANC to safeguard its leading role in government as part of guaranteeing the successful creation of a developmental state.

Our failure to defend the ANC’s outright electoral majority has far reaching implications for the stability of governance, as demonstrated by the chaos we are currently faced with in many hung municipalities across the country.

iv. The Leagues and the Alliance

A critical feature of our organizational strategy, with proven political success, is the important role of the ANC leagues and the Congress Alliance in strengthening the hegemony of the ANC.

Our organizational machinery is incomplete without fully functional leagues anchored on elected structures. This is also true of the strategic importance of a fully functional and programmatically cooperating alliance. We must convene a provincial alliance summit sometime this year to discuss political and organizational matters of concern that will help strengthen the Congress alliance.

We have recently finalized what had been a drawn-out process of salary negotiations between public servants and government. This led to amor disruptions to the provision of critical public services such as healthcare. A clear picture arose that there is a need for the alliance leadership to constantly engage on political matters, including guiding processes such as wage negotiations in the public sector, to avoid this negative impact on the delivery of already strained public services.

In terms of the Leagues, this PEC must seriously discuss the work necessary to assist the ANC Youth League, the Women’s League, and the Veterans League to organize their congresses. Where necessary, the PEC must be prepared to engage the national offices of these Leagues to facilitate speedy progress. Our leagues must be activated as soon as possible to play the important role of mobilizing their respective sectors of society behind the banner of the ANC and to bring dynamic substance to the strategic thinking of the ANC.

3. International Balance of Forces

The ongoing war in Ukraine has far-reaching strategic geopolitical and economic consequences for the peoples of the world. It is the most significant geopolitical development that shapes and will continue to shape the possibilities of what we have come to know is the international political economy.

Already, global economic growth performance has been significantly disrupted by the Russia-Ukraine fallout.

There are legitimate fears of a global recession because of the disruptions to global trade triggered by the war. The war has caused major disruptions in the global supply chains of food, fuel, fertilizer and energy. Especially on the area of fuel and fertilizer, the production and trade in food globally has been negatively affected such that inflation has gone out of hand and the cost-of living crisis at a global scale.

As a starting point, the nature of the conflict can no longer be described simply as a Russia-Ukraine war. It has within it multiple countries and political institutions with an active role in the direction of the conflict. As a result, it is now playing out as a conflict between the US-led NATO and Russia.

If we analyse the time from the turn of the 2000s to today, especially the post 2008 Global Financial Crisis, as a single geopolitical period we will notice that the current period reveals an emergence of a nexus of power in eastern Europe and Asia that is mounting a challenge to US hyper dominance. In reality, therefore, this is a renewed conflict for geostrategic dominance between the United States on the one hand and a resurgent eastern bloc that consolidates around China.

In the build-up top our 55th National Conference, the policy discussion document on Strategy & Tactics correctly noted that “this is the context in which the recent outbreak of war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine must be viewed. This development has indeed precipitated a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous international conjuncture, VUCA, overnight. This conflict is bound to have far-reaching implications for the foreseeable future. Latent tensions of the 20th Century Cold War have been painfully reignited creating a cesspool which many countries, including our own, are unavoidably going to be dragged into.”

As we convene here today, for instance, President Xi Jinping of China has been on a four day state visit to Russia. Together with President Putin, they have held a series of engagements around precisely the evolving war situation in Russia. This includes the growing pressure mounted on Russia by the US-led NATO. In this context, international media sympathetic to the US-NATO cause has been reporting – with much displeasure – that President Xi Jinping seems to be pledging support to President Putin and Russia, instead of condemning them.

A false narrative is therefore growing that China and Russia constitute a global alliance that should be condemned. The Russia-Ukraine war has essentially served the purpose of baiting China into taking a position against the United States so that they can qualify as an open opponent of the West. What is in fact at play, which has led to this attempted isolation of Russia and China, is a grand theory of global dominance in which the US should not allow that any power in the world should have the possibility in the post-Cold War period to challenge US interests, especially its hegemony.

There is a conspicuous failure of the current global institutions to resolve conflicts fairly, justly and equitably in order to safeguard the interests of all nations. This includes the United Nations and other multilateral institutions meant to serve the cause of equitable peace in the world. This is the context in which the International Criminal Court has taken the dangerous decision to issue an arrest warrant for President Putin of Russia. This is to essentially choose Russia as the sole villain in this international conflict and exonerate all other actors, including downplaying the warmongering record of western countries.

There is pressure now on South Africa and other countries as a signatories to the Rome Statutes that established the International Criminal Court to arrest President Putin. With respect to South Africa’s case, this comes in the context of the upcoming BRICS summit to be hosted here in our country in August.

Of course, South Africa cannot afford to accept this expectation of arresting the President Putin for many obvious reason . This would be the same stance that we would have to adopt were such an expectation to arise in relation to a President of the United States. To act on such a warrant of arrest, on both instances, would not only be to trigger world war 3 but to also render South Africa as the epicentre of such a war which will be likely inevitable .

South Africa must retain its non-aligned position, firstly, and sustain its call for a peaceful resolution of all international disputes without resorting to war. This includes refusing to be used as a pawn in the execution of a warrant of arrest whose only effect would be the outbreak of a global nuclear war.

In this context, South Africa must also actively criticise the tendency to repurpose international institutions as instruments of war by powerful countries. Otherwise, we should categorically argue, that practice renders these institutions worthless for the vast majority of countries.

4. Conclusion

Comrades, we have an urgent duty to consider all of these organisational and political matters in the context of the challenges of our time. Our movement, the ANC, faces one of the most difficult periods in the battle for social transformation in our country.

The next 12 months require strategic political focus, vibrant and activist branches of the ANC, a delivering government with a clear action plan to improve the lives of the people and a committed cadre ready to give their all to the tasks at hand. These tasks necessitate unity of purpose, minimal disruptions to organisational work and an outward looking ANC preoccupied only with the challenge of winning the hearts and minds of the people.

We therefore have a duty to actively and systematically combat factionalism and ill-discipline. Revolutionary advances are possible only when the progressive movement is bound together by discipline and commitment to the tasks at hand. Our success in the coming months will therefore require the enforcement of discipline, mobilisation of all members and cadres behind a clear political programme of action and the ability to execute all identified tasks within the set timeframes.

We therefore present this Political Input to you, the Provincial Executive Committee, for your consideration and further elaboration.

Amandla!Political Input by the Provincial Chairperson, Cde Oscar Mabuyane, to the Ordinary Provincial Executive Committee Meeting of the ANC held in Mbizana, Alfred Nzo Region, on 26 March 2023