ANC national working committee member and minister of international relations and cooperation Ronald Lamola has called on the ANC to lift the ban on the succession debate, saying party structures should be allowed to debate the kind of leaders they want without discussing names.
The ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has issued a warning to members to refrain from discussing who will succeed Cyril Ramaphosa as party until the Luthuli House has drafted guideline son leadership “issues and processes”.
In an interview with Sowetan's IN THE KNOW podcast, Lamola said the process of nomination should not be confused with the succession debate.
“The process of nomination is when you now open it up for structures to nominate an individual to lead, which is led by the electoral commission, but before that process, there is a need for ANC structures to debate on the succession debate and say, 'these are the type of leaders we want to see in this epoch', and not personalise it as it is happening now so that we are able to have an honest conversation,” he said.
“The ANC has also reached that stage now that the issue of succession can no longer be left to nature ... when you wait for the nomination process and see who will be nominated. In the past, the ANC had a way where the elders guided the process.
“The structures themselves don't engage on debates of leadership but we know when we see the leaks that there are platforms where this issue of leadership is being engaged, so the structures need to guide this process.”
Lamola said the impending national general council could lay the basis of a policy engagement on succession and how it should be managed.
He said he believed in a generational mix that can continue with the renewal process of the ANC.
“As to whether I will avail myself or not, I will answer at the right time. At this stage, what I continue to say is that in the last [general] elections we got 40%. We are a movement that is on a rebound, that needs to reboot and rebuild. That is what all members of the ANC should focus on.”
On the ANC's drop in support, Lamola said the party needed to build support, particularly at the level of service delivery both in local and national government.
He said the challenges of railway and road infrastructure should also be looked at to allow the economy to function.
“The electricity challenge is behind us but we need to maintain it. That is the only way we can restore the trust deficit that is now existing between the ANC and society.”
Lamola said the economy should grow and unemployment should be resolved.
Sowetan's sister publication, TimesLIVE, previously reported that Mbalula had said that those talking about who should replace ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa in December 2027 will be met with the “strongest suppression they have never seen before”.
Asked if the ANC’s decision to expel EFF leader Julius Malema and others was correct at the time, Lamola said: “I have always believed it was a wrong one, politically, because even if the ANC had a clear belief we might have overstepped our role, the ANC could have still had an opportunity to correct, either by putting a lenient sentence [or] by putting us through political guidance in terms of what the ANC believed the Youth League should have conducted themselves.
“That should have been a proper form of engagement, which meant that superior logic should have been the one that prevailed, and we could have learnt from that and continued to sharpen our theoretical views and our thinking.
“There could have been a dynamic interaction instead of a sledgehammer of a disciplinary process, which then becomes very technical. I do think that there was still an opportunity and that is what we raised at the time.”
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