ANC veteran and former president Kgalema Motlanthe says that president Jacob Zuma and the rest of the ANC’s top six should resign long before the party moves to elect new leadership in December this year.
Speaking in an interview on Power FM this week, Motlanthe said that the ANC leadership had failed to lead by example, and so the party’s problems had now filtered down to branch level.
He said the ANC needed to acknowledge that it was in crisis, and that Zuma and other leaders should step down at the ANC consultative conference in June.
ANC veterans have fallen silent on the internal turmoils of the party after its leadership agreed to meet with them several times in the latter part of 2016.
The two groups – former and current leadership – agreed to extend the ANC’s policy conference to be held in the middle of 2017 by one day, to incorporate a brief consultative conference where veterans could voice their concerns.
Motlanthe and other ANC veterans have not shied away from vocalising their concerns over Zuma’s leadership of the party, but were criticised in turn for spreading disunity among ANC supporters.
Motlanthe briefly served as president of South Africa after former president Thabo Mbeki was recalled by the ANC, before Zuma took the reins – after which he served as Zuma’s deputy president until 2014.
The former president challenged Zuma in the run for ANC presidency at the party’s Manguang conference in 2012, where he was soundly defeated. He did not run for re-election as deputy president, lost his spot in the ANC’s top 6, and subsequently removed himself from the NEC.
There was brief speculation that Motlanthe would be brought back into South African politics in the coming elective conference as a possible candidate for ANC president, however he has not appeared on any of the publicly released slates, while telling Power FM that it was a bad idea to recycle leaders.
