POLITRICKING WITH TSHIDI MADIA: BALEKA MBETE ON PHALA PHALA & WOMEN IN THE ANC

Baleka Mbete ran her own ANC presidential campaign at Nasrec. Now she's looking forward to helping the ANC Women's League get back on its feet.

Baleka Mbete. Picture:@GautengANC/Twitter

Tshidi Madia |

Newly appointed convener of the African National Congress Women’s League national task team Baleka Mbete says she has no regrets about backing party president Cyril Ramaphosa at the 2017 national conference.

Mbete, who was running her own presidential campaign that failed to pick up steam, at the last minute announced she wanted the incumbent to succeed Jacob Zuma. She was stepping down as the ANC’s national chairperson at the time.

While in a sit-down with Eyewitness News podcast Politricking with Tshidi Madia, Mbete refused to directly answer whether Ramaphosa should return to the helm come the ruling party's elective conference at the end of this year. But she did say the current leadership should be retained.

“I believe the best thing in our interests is to have stability; in our souls, in our hearts and in everything we do. Let's not do it with a tone of 'we want to get rid of this one'... I think let's keep the leadership we have, only change that which is essential to be changed,” said Mbete.

The former ANC chairperson also weighed in on the raging Phala Phala farm saga, where a burglary at the president’s house was the subject of a criminal complaint by former spy boss Arthur Fraser. He’s accused the president of not only hoarding millions of foreign currency in cash at his farm, but of not reporting the break-in and allowing suspects to be kidnapped and tortured.

Mbete says the ANC’s national executive committee’s (NEC) processes are unfolding simultaneously with law enforcement agencies. The NEC is the ANC’s highest decision-making body in between conferences. Ramaphosa is set to appear before the party’s integrity commission regarding the matter.

“We will then be in a better position to discuss that matter, based on a report, because there are processes [and] legal instruments coming into play. Let's gather that information. Let's be patient, let's look at it very rationally. Let's not feel pressured to judge. Let's do what needs to be done and to be fair, on all sides of the matter,” Mbete told Eyewitness News.

ANC WOMEN'S LEAGUE ROLE

Her new role is expected to help resuscitate the once powerful ANC Women’s League, which has over the years used its might to shape the leadership of the governing party.

The league was dissolved in April, with its structures said to be in disarray and in poor financial health.

Its controversial leader Bathabile Dlamini previously told Eyewitness News the move was done to render the women’s league useless and weak come December.

In 2017 the league backed Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to take over from Zuma but was defeated.

The Nasrec conference also saw the ANC move from having two women in its top six to just one - Jessie Duarte - who was elected deputy secretary general. She has since taken ill, with treasurer general Paul Mashatile stepping into her shoes.

And while some women have found their way into key leadership roles across provinces and regions, Mbete tends to agree with those who view the current ANC as one having lost some ground on this front.

“To have two women and the next thing you have one, I don't think it's something that the ANC should get away with. And I'm talking about the ANC collectively, ourselves included as women, because it's also a question of how we ourselves strategise is how we as women plan together, how we as women are sensitise one another so that we can actually be very alert to some potholes and things that have happened.”

As the ANC marches towards its policy conference, Mbete says the contentious step aside resolution must be assessed.

“I think that's a matter that has become a very volatile space in terms of recent developments in actual implementation,” she says.

Mbete suggests the difficulty with the resolution lies in taking a broad guideline and narrowing it down to give it life so it can be applied practically to party members.