Durban - ANC presidential hopeful Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma says money continues to play a big role in the direction the party conferences take, claiming there are people who want to auction the ANC.
Dlamini Zuma has urged the ANC’s electoral committee to do more to address the use of money to influence conference outcomes.
Her remarks come as the battle for the ANC’s top position at its upcoming, potentially watershed, 55th national elective conference, pencilled in for 16 to 20 December at Nasrec, hots up.
Despite not meeting the threshold after branches completed their nomination processes, Dlamini Zuma has insisted she is still in the running for the party’s top job, leaving it to delegates to decide her fate at the conference itself.
Discussing the upcoming elective conference with Professor Sipho Seepe during a ZOOM meeting of The Press Club SA, Dlamini Zuma said: “My sense is that money is still playing a big role. There are people who want to auction, and I think the committee must do a lot more.”
She said there were financial spreadsheets being “thrown around” which indicated something was amiss.
“I think that Comrade Kgalema (Motlanthe, chairperson of the ANC electoral committee) must tighten up and make sure that their committee does a lot more to give confidence to the process,” Dlamini Zuma said.
This is not the first time Dlamini Zuma has expressed concerns about the use of money to influence the outcome of ANC conferences.
In September, in an interview on Ukhozi FM’s isiZulu current affairs programme Abasiki Bebunda, Dlamini Zuma said it was commonplace for money to be used at such party gatherings.
“We hope that those with money will not auction the ANC, because it shouldn’t be that the ANC is auctioned. It is the people who are members in the branches (who) should be allowed to do what they should.
“Those who have money use it, but I think we should leave the branches to choose, because if we allow the branches to choose as they wish, there will be no division,” Dlamini Zuma said at the time.
She added that the ANC should try to be self-sufficient and not be dependent on other people by creating its own companies that are “transparently ANC” in several sectors, as long as they did not do business with the government.
“We must have companies that are transparently ANC, not companies that are held by people for the ANC – no. That will also go a long way in ensuring not only that head office and staff of the ANC will be paid, but that people will not be taking money from somewhere else and saying: ‘I am taking it for the ANC’ when they are not taking it for the ANC.
“It’s one of the things we should really do and be transparent and open about it,” Dlamini Zuma said.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE