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Since the 2014 Elections, the African National Congress has witnessed a
massive change in Parliamentary politics. This change has been in both
form and content and reflects the reconfiguration of the political forces
in society. We are seeing two streams of politics; both characterised by
religious opposition to any proposal made by the governing party, the
African National Congress. Whether the proposal makes sense or not, both
the DA and the EFF have taken a position of adamant and dogmatic
opposition to any proposal of the ANC. Indeed their interest is the same
– that of delegitimising and weakening the ANC as a liberation movement
with the intention to dislodge it.

The posture of the DA is not a new one and has been continuing for a
number of years. We have defined it as the DA leading the
anti-majoritarian liberal offensive on the ANC as a liberation movement.
It uses the theme of values versus numbers instead of values and numbers.
It is further underpinned by the strategy of taking every decision of the
governing party to litigation with the aim to make it difficult for the
legitimate government to govern.

South Africa has also witnessed the entering of a fascist movement into
our parliamentary politics. This movement uses uniform to mobilise in the
same way that Hitler used brown shirts in 1930s. The worrying factor in
this regard is its use of anarchy and destruction as their modus
operandi. This anarchy and destruction fits in to the paramilitary
content of their strategy, which shows early signs of a rebel movement;
designed and calculated to undermine democracy and state institutions.

The view of the National Working Committee is that in countering and
dealing with these gutter politics, the ANC should avoid stooping to
these low levels set and thus making it difficult for anyone to see the
difference between these disruptive tendencies and our programme to
create a better life for all. Instead the ANC should focus on the
implementation of the programme that we had developed with and sold to
the electorate. To this end, the NWC reaffirmed its commitment to the
focused implementation of the Manifesto as summarised in the State of the
Nation Address.

The ANC Manifesto of the 2014 General Elections had committed the ANC to
strengthen service delivery and focus on local government. Since the
elections, the National Working Committee has been visiting provinces in
pursuance of this commitment. We have been meeting with ANC Councillors
and ANC leadership structures with the intention to strengthen our work
of serving the people. To date we have visited Limpopo, North West, Free
State, Mpumalanga and parts of Gauteng. This coming weekend we will be
visiting the Eastern Cape province.

The intention is to ensure that all ANC deployees move in the same
direction and appreciate the importance of serving our people. ANC
structures must work in unison in the furtherance of our electorate
commitment. To this end, we strongly condemn actions such as the
incidents at the Tshwane Regional Office yesterday and trust that our
structures will urgently resolve the underlying issues that led to the
conflict.

The African National Congress welcomes the settlement of the strike in
the metal and engineering sector. We trust that all outstanding
disagreements will soon be resolved in the interest of stability for both
workers and the economy. It is necessary that a debate must ensue in
society on how collectively we find a lasting solution to strikes that
last too long and have a negative impact on the livelihood of workers and
the economy. Such a debate must not be seen as an attack on worker’s
rights and an affront on the right to strike but rather an important step
towards mitigating the negative effects of prolonged strikes on workers
and the economy.

We have noted the start of the process to systematically hand back
powers to the government of Limpopo following the Section 100
intervention instituted in 2012. We welcome this development
understanding that it is part of rebuilding confidence of our people in
our commitment to prudent financial management and accountable delivery
in pursuit of a better life for all.

The ANC congratulates all athletes representing South Africa for their
sterling performance thus far in the Commonwealth Games currently taking
place in Glasgow. Sports continue to be a critical tool to build unity
and cohesion in our country and we wish Team South Africa well as they
continue to fly high our nation’s flag.