The ANC’s top brass spent the greater part of the weekend debating whether to oust those implicated in corruption, as the country awaited plans to meet Covid-19 vaccination targets and a solution to the funding crisis in higher education.
Despite the vaccine rollout and funding for tertiary education being the top items on the agenda of the ANC’s ordinary national executive committee (NEC) meeting at the weekend, insiders said the issues were glossed over in one day.
Instead, considerable time was used by warring factions who fought over the fate of criminally implicated leaders, including secretary-general Ace Magashule.
The terms of reference for the party's integrity commission was among the agenda items but the contentious “step aside” resolution adopted at the 2017 conference overshadowed all other key discussion issues, including local government elections.
Yesterday, audio clips of the chaotic meeting emerged on social media including where Magashule apparently disagreed with the ANC NEC statement on criminally implicated leaders stepping aside in seven days.
According to insiders the party dealt with most of the reports on Saturday, before the marathon meeting zoomed into integrity commission reports on Sunday and later degenerated into a battle over the future of the party’s implicated leaders.
The reports had been presented, briefly reflected on and adopted, starting with health minister Zweli Mkhize’s on Friday, one insider told Sowetan.
“This was a comprehensive update, especially on the rollout plan and the availability of vaccines ...” the insider said, adding that there were no qualms about the current efforts to fight the pandemic.
Sowetan understands Mkhize had told the meeting that the government would have addressed delays in the vaccination rollout by the end of the second quarter.
Higher education minister Blade Nzimande, according to another insider, pointed to the need for the private sector to be roped in to help fund higher education but there was “no substantive discussion or resolution on how this would be done”.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which is among the organisations forming the People’s Vaccine Campaign, said the ANC-led government had so far failed to give assurances that it would deliver vaccines in time to meet its target to inoculate 67% of the population by the end of the year.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said yesterday that despite delays, the country would secure the required 67% herd immunity in time, which will require the vaccination of about 40-million people. Speaking yesterday in Gqeberha during a visit to Aspen’s plant for the manufacture of the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) vaccine, Ramaphosa insisted that the lack of availability of vaccines was a challenge for all countries.
“Losing a little bit of time does not mean, in my book, that government is failing” he said.
He said SA would secure 30-million doses of J&J vaccines that would be rolled out from next month.
SA Students Congress (Sasco) secretary-general Buthanani Ngwane said the organisation was keeping a watchful eye on the ANC NEC meeting to see if anything of substance around the issue of free education would come out of it.
“We are looking out to see if what they come out with has concrete solutions, and not just an outcome in principle of supporting free higher education,” Ngwane said.
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