Despite being snubbed by his own province, former Eastern Cape premier Phumulo Masualle says he has been inundated with calls from provincial ANC branches requesting that he stand for a top-six position at the party’s national elective conference in December. Masualle, who serves as deputy minister of public enterprises, has been officially nominated by KwaZulu-Natal ANC bosses as their preferred candidate to take over from Ace Magashule as the party’s secretary-general.
The ANC in the Eastern Cape is advocating for women candidates to be elected to the party’s influential secretary-general’s office at its national elective conference in mid-December. The Eastern Cape ANC bosses, after their provincial executive committee (PEC) meeting on Sunday, resolved to lobby other provinces to support their view that the party should have female candidates for both the secretary-general (SG) and deputy SG positions.
However, he has urged the province to be open to outside influence as lobby groups get into full swing in a bid to gain support for their preferred candidates to be nominated for leadership positions.
The ANC Youth League in the Eastern Cape was left severely bruised by the recent provincial cabinet reshuffle by premier Oscar Mabuyane. The reshuffle gave the cold shoulder to the youth league. It did not recognise any young person for deployment to the provincial cabinet. This is yet another blow after ANC chair Gwede Mantashe recently quashed the leadership aspirations of the ANCYL as a mischievous cover-up for access to state resources.
While the ANC in Eastern Cape will go to the party’s national policy conference on Thursday to support the proposed reduction of South African provinces, it will also advocate for the controversial step-aside policy to be “institutionalised” within all three spheres of government. While other provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo have called for the total scrapping of the step-aside policy, the province will not only call for the removal of the party’s alleged rogues from party structu.