‘The ANC remains our home’

INDEPENDENTS EXPLAIN

THE independent candidates who contested the local government elections last week have expressed their desire to join forces with the ANC in the eThekwini Municipality.

In a two-page unsigned letter, the candidates, under the banner of “community councillors”, make it clear their decision to stand for election as independent candidates was never an attack on the ANC.

“Our blood may be red, but the ANC remains our home and our blood is first and foremost black, green and gold,” they said in a letter yesterday. “We must congratulate the ANC for a win as it continues to demonstrate that people are still traditionally inclined to it.”

The Electoral Commission of South Africa statistics in the run-up to the election held last week indicated that 57 people stood as independents in eThekwini. Five won their wards, including the hotly contested Ward 4 in Inchanga, where at least one person was killed and four were injured during a community meeting before the elections.

Havoc

Petros Nxumalo, who won Ward 4, said he was not aware of the letter but was not put off by the suggestion of working with the ANC. He would see how things unfolded in the council.

Many of those who stood as independent candidates had broken ranks with the ANC after being left out of the party’s nomination list for councillor positions. Before the elections, the list wreaked havoc in the party and led to violent protests across the province. “It’s unfortunate that the ANC last week took the decision to discard its members that are popular in their residential wards and wanted by the community, but we hope in the future the ANC will open discussions,” said the letter.

It said the ANC list problems had created an opportunity for opposition parties to take over – undemocratic candidate selection processes had caused a gap for counter-revolutionaries to infiltrate the party’s strongholds. Some of the strongholds had been captured by “liberals”.

“Deep-rooted factionalism, populist demagogues, resulted to where we are today. We must caution the people that we understand the anger and frustration to an extent of voting for the DA.”

They stressed they were willing to talk to the ANC.

“There has been no meeting planned by us to talk to the ANC. In our knowledge we remain members of the ANC until the ANC decides otherwise.”

Vusumuzi Mbanjwa of Ward 12, one of the councillors who drafted the letter, said they would be willing to work with the party provided it apologised for how the nomination process was handled.

ANC provincial spokesman Mdumiseni Ntuli said a far as he knows there was no engagement by the party with the independent candidates. He said the party would not be running after individuals who abandoned it and stood against it despite advice not to do so.

He said those wanting to come back would have, at the very least, to apologise for their actions.

“Some of them will have to offer more than an apology because they have done serious damage to the ANC