MBEKI: ANC MUST REMAIN TRUE TO ITSELF

This is the post that would have been done on 24th July.

What a statement to make when there is such internal politics and power struggles going on with the ANC itself.

My take on this is that the very thing that put them together in the first place, being the fact that they united, despite all the different tribes, kings and the rest - to take on the evil that was apartheid, is now no longer there, and this will be the undoing of the them.

Mbeki: ANC must remain true to its roots
Cape Town, South Africa
22 June 2007 02:23

The African National Congress's (ANC) national policy conference in Gauteng next week should remain loyal to principle and continuity, but also respond to changing circumstances, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. The four-day conference, which starts on Wednesday, will assess the party's major policy positions and make recommendations to be finalised at the party's national conference in December."Itself a gathering made up of delegates from all our branches and other organs of our movement, the policy conference provides the democratic space for our membership as a whole to help determine the vision and tasks of our movement," Mbeki said in his weekly online newsletter."It therefore helps to reaffirm and entrench the democratic nature of the ANC, which ... contributes to the deepening of the critically important culture of democracy in our country," he said.

Assuming the ANC was re-elected in 2009, it was clear that the recommendations of the policy conference would have a significant impact on South Africa's evolution in the period up to 2012 -- the centenary of the ANC. "The policy conference will have to ensure, as I am certain it will, that it approaches its work with all due seriousness and elaborates the policy proposals that will help us to achieve the outcomes indicated by our national executive committee as we celebrated the 95th anniversary of our movement earlier this year. In this regard, it must draw inspiration from a long history of policy formulation that has been an integral part of the work and functioning of our movement from its very foundation."

One of the unbroken threads since then was a continuous process of policy formation, which had enabled the ANC to evolve through many historical periods. "The governments we have formed since the victory of the democratic revolution, mandated by the people, have faithfully respected the longstanding tradition of our movement, always to respect its democratically evolved policy positions. We say this with no fear of contradiction, and can prove it in great detail."

The policy conference would carry with it a tradition of loyalty to principle, continuity in policy making, unwavering strategic focus and considered tactical flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. It would also understand that the policies it recommended to the national conference were worth nothing if they did not advance the objective of ensuring "that the ANC that turns 100 years old on January 8 2012 truly lives up to the noble ideals on which it was founded", Mbeki said. -- Sapa