DURBAN - THE ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is trying to deal with the mess over the controversial councillor candidates nomination process for the local government elections.
Last week hundreds of ANC members and supporters in the Moses Mabhida Region (Pietermaritzburg and surrounding towns) marched to regional offices complaining about councillors that they did not want being “parachuted” into their areas.
They claimed that the candidates who had won the approval of community members had been overlooked by the regional structure.
This year, the ANC undertook an exercise to engage with communities on the councillor candidates process, a move aimed at ensuring that the chosen candidate enjoyed community support and endorsement.
Some candidates who had received community approval complained that they had been overlooked in parts of the province, leading to many members lodging disputes over the process.
EThekwini and Moses Mabhida regions recorded instances where aggrieved members marched to party offices over the selection process.
The ANC said it would deal with the issues raised after the elections.
“In line with our commitment to continue with the (dispute) process that is what we have done, we sat through them from Monday to Friday last week and are continuing today from where we left off,” Appeals Committee chairperson Cyril Xaba told The Mercury yesterday.
He added that while there were many disputes over the candidates nomination process, the committee remained confident that the process would be concluded by the end of the week.
He pointed out that in some instances a candidate nomination process in one ward had many disputes because it had been reported by different individuals and this resulted in a high number of disputes that were recorded.
Some ANC members also expressed safety fears, saying those whose names appeared in the councillors’ list were unlikely to give up.
The Mercury’s sister newspaper, Isolezwe, reported this week that ANC member from Ugu district, Sthembiso Dlamini, who had also lodged a dispute over the process, was shot dead on Saturday.
The uproar over the councillors’ selection controversy also occurred in the build-up to the 2011 local government elections and this led to numerous complaints from aggrieved members.
This prompted the national leadership to deploy senior leader Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma on a fact-finding mission. One of Dlamini Zuma’s recommendations in 2011 was for the recalling of members who had emerged as councillors and the rerun of the nomination process, but this was not done.
ANC KZN spokesperson Nhlakanipho Ntombela said the governing party was aware of challenges that could arise from the dispute resolution process.
“We know that there are instances where we did not perform well during the elections, and in some of the wards concerned there had been complaints about the candidate that was fielded.
“There is a sense that if disputes had been attended to ahead of the elections, the outcome could have been different,” said Ntombela.
One of the prospects facing the ANC is the possible recalling of some members who made it as candidates without following due process and won their wards as councillors, which could see a series of by-elections being held in different parts of KwaZulu-Natal.
Political analyst Thabani Khumalo questioned whether the ANC had capacity and courage to recall councillors that would have been approved questionably, pointing to how Dlamini Zuma’s 2011 recommendations had been ignored.
“When one looks at history, the ANC does not emerge as a party courageous enough to recall its councillors, and going through a by-election is both costly and risky and the governing party’s financial woes are well known.”
THE MERCURY