While the provincial ANC will send the largest delegation to the party’s national general council (NGC) next week, concerns have been raised that its official membership figures have decreased by almost 50% since it’s provincial conference in May 2022.
The province will send 160 delegates to the NGC to be held in Gauteng from Monday to Thursday next week.
Speaking at the party’s provincial general council (PGC) in East London on Monday, in preparation of the NGC, provincial ANC chair Oscar Mabuyane raised concerns that the province’s latest official membership figure had decreased drastically, from more than 130,000 to 70,000 members.
While Mabuyane blamed the decline on glitches in the party’s membership registration system, he also blamed inept branch officials for their failure to capture membership numbers, which he said were much higher than the official figures.
Mabuyane said the glitches in the membership recording system used by all party branches could not be used as an excuse by the province when it worked in other provinces.
“It is not that members are 70,000, members are renewing but they are not being captured by the system,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the ANC doesn’t work on a manual system, but rather through an electronic system. It only picks up what the system picks up so it is treated as legit.
“It is glitches in the system, but also the capacity of our administration to assist members.
“It is no longer an issue of whether there is a network or not, but I think it is a question of understanding how that system works. If it can work elsewhere it should work everywhere.”
This comes while the party raised concerns on the inability to attract membership from minority groups, as it had done prior to 1994.
ANC NEC member Mmamoloko Kubayi said it was a serious concern that the ANC today had become more and more pan-Africanist, rather than a non-racial nationalist organisation.
Kubayi said while minority groups were comfortable in the ANC in the 1980s and 90s, it was a concern that they found it difficult to to exist within ANC structures and make the ANC their home these days.
She said such a strategy was being used by other parties, to mobilise minorities on the basis of race.
Mabuyane said: “If we have a situation where people are persuaded against the ANC on racial grounds, that tells you people are uncertain about the ANC’s non-racialism programme.
“If the ANC doesn’t elect minorities in its leadership, from the branch level upwards, it is easy for people to be persuaded by others using conspiracy theories.
“And people will always believe those conspiracy theories.”
The NGC, Mabuyane told delegates, should not be approached with uncertainty or internal contradiction, but as a province united in purpose, armed with a coherent policy mandate and anchored in the lived realities of the people.
He said they would take to Gauteng policy recommendations that spoke decisively to the political economy of the Eastern Cape.
“Our delegates cannot go to the NGC as spectators,” Mabuyane said.
“They must go there as disciplined and informed revolutionaries who carry the hopes of this province.”
He said the province would speak authoritatively, not apologetically, about a clear and coherent policy agenda that reflected the unique challenges and opportunities of the province.
“The political economy of the Eastern Cape carries a historical burden that no national policy can ignore.
“The legacy of dispossession, forced removals and the migrant labour system remains etched in our rural poverty, fragmented economic structure, uneven infrastructure and skewed land ownership patterns.
“The Eastern Cape requires deliberate national policy interventions that acknowledge our historical debt and provide targeted support for rural development, infrastructure renewal and land reform.”
Mabuyane said the province was defined by what he referred to as a dual economy.
“On one side, we host globally competitive manufacturing industries anchored by the automotive sector, components production and emerging renewable energy industries.
“On the other side, we carry vast rural expanses where poverty remains entrenched and economic activity remains limited.
“Our strategy must integrate these realities, constructing a single and coherent developmental path that embraces both industrial modernity and rural transformation.”
He said at the NGC, the province would “insist on an industrial policy framework that positions the Eastern Cape at the centre of the transition to electric mobility, expanding supplier development, strengthening the special economic zones and retaining investment within our borders”.
Prioritising rural economic development would occupy a central space in the province’s policy agenda.
The province would call for a coherent national land policy that aligned traditional leadership, government and communities behind a unified development agenda.
Models of land reform that prioritised community ownership, productive use, value chain integration and security of tenure would be advanced, with Mabuyane saying if the NGC avoided these questions “our rural underdevelopment will persist”.
He said the province would not defeat unemployment unless rural communities became active economic agents.
“Rural development must become a national priority backed by firm budget allocations, rural infrastructure investments and targeted agricultural support initiatives.
“The Eastern Cape will push for firm NGC resolutions that elevate rural industrialisation to the status of a national economic pillar.”
The provincial ANC also revealed that it would champion debate and policy proposal for the change in how the party voted for its leadership candidates, saying they would push for the one member, one vote system.
“This proposal strikes at the heart of factionalism,” Mabuyane said. “It dismantles the culture that has eroded discipline and undermined organisational unity.
“It is a bold and progressive step towards restoring internal democracy and reaffirming the ANC as a movement of the people, not a playground of factions.”
He said the province would go to the NGC “not to follow debates, but to shape them”.
Daily Dispatch
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