ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte says the party’s regional executive committees (RECs) in the metros will no longer be allowed to participate in the selection process of mayors for the upcoming municipal elections.
Duarte was yesterday giving an update on the party’s candidate list process, which resulted in the registration of 4,468 ward councillor candidates despite more than 700 disputes still to be resolved.
The ANC is yet to announce its mayoral candidates, and Duarte said the responsibility to nominate those who would potentially lead metros, after being interviewed by the national leadership, would be taken over from regions and be given to provincial structures.
“For metros, the provincial executive committee, not the REC, will discuss the choice of three possible candidates that will fit all the criteria we have set up, which is quite stringent,” Duarte said.
This comes as the party insists on strong and experienced candidates for the key municipalities it is planning to reclaim and which it lost in 2016, including Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.
“We prefer people who have a very solid understanding of financial management. We prefer people who have a very deep-rooted understanding of the ANC itself, a long-standing member of the ANC. But we also would like someone who understands the city that they are going to represent,” Duarte said.
Regional structures have been responsible for selecting three mayoral nominees, with the late Johannesburg mayor being the last to be nominated from the region.
Duarte also said those who still wanted to dispute the party’s current candidates list would have to present strong evidence that they were the preferred choice of their communities.
The national electoral committee led by party stalwart Kgalema Motlanthe has made recommendations on the manipulation of the selection process and disputes by ANC leaders.
The report has called for investigation and disciplinary action against those fingered while it pointed out that the disputes would be looked into after the November 1 elections.
Duarte said while the party would sit down with aggrieved people after the elections, they had to present concrete proof of the allegations of manipulation they complained about.
“The only dispute that may be relevant is if a person can prove without reasonable doubt to the ANC that they indeed were the candidate that the community did select,” Duarte said.
Duarte said the party was, however, planning to take action against leaders who had been fingered by Motlanthe’s report in allegations of manipulating the list process and of flouting the party’s guidelines during the selection process.
"All the people that were mentioned by Motlanthe’s report are being followed up by the ANC. In the electoral committee [meeting] we agreed that while it is right to raise the concept of discipline, we still need to follow the process of the ANC. The recommendation is that there are investigations and disciplinary action, so you can be assured it will happen,” Duarte said.
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