The ANC and its alliance partners in KZN plan to ban the booing and insulting of their leaders at meetings.
|||Durban – The ANC and its alliance partners in KwaZulu-Natal announced on Thursday that they plan to ban the booing and insulting of their leaders at meetings.
This was revealed at a press conference in Durban held by the provincial African National Congress secretary Super Zuma, KwaZulu-Natal Cosatu secretary Edwin Mkhize, the SA Commmunist Party’s (SACP) provincial secretary Themba Mthembu and South African National Civic Organisation’s provincial secretary Richard Hlophe.
Exactly how the alliance partners would enforce this was unclear, but Mthembu said: “You stop booing by making sure there will be consequences.”
The ban not only extends to meetings, but also to the insulting of leaders through the media and on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
A statement released by the four men said that the four had met for several hours on Monday to discuss several issues affecting their alliance.
“The Alliance Political Council agreed to ban booing and insulting of leaders in the (sic) public gatherings and in the media including social media and any Alliance platforms.”
The announcement of the ban follows several incidents in the past year where various leaders have been booed, with the most recent incident at the funeral of an SACP member.
Three weeks ago former African National Congress KwaZulu-Natal secretary Sipho Gcabashe was booed off the stage at the funeral of SACP member Philip Dlamini in Inchanga as he addressed an estimated 2,000 mourners.
The four men highlighted that the alliance was intact and focused on ensuring an ANC victory at the upcoming local government elections.
But both Mkhize and Mthembu said that while they accepted the ANC processes their members would not accept candidates that are imposed on them.
The SACP has been at odds with the ANC over the selection of candidates at branch meetings, and following Dlamini’s death Mthembu announced earlier this month that the SACP would be withdrawing from all candidate nomination processes.
Mthembu said on Thursday that the SACP did not have a problem supporting ANC candidates who had been selected in line with the rules of the [ANC] party rules, but that its dissatisfaction was over candidates who were selected without the rules being followed.
“We are not going to support candidates that are imposed. Anything outside that does not deserve our support,” he said.
Zuma said that the selection of candidates in the troubled Inchanga area where Dlamini had been gunned down last month would not be reversed unless an appeal process found that there were irregularities in the nominations of the branch candidates.
African News Agency
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