JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has begun its national convention amid scandals and bitter divisions.
South Africa’s crippling power cuts of more than 7 hours a day, a 35% unemployment rate and corruption will be key issues debated, President Cyril Ramaphosa said at the opening of the convention on Friday night.
Addressing delegates, Ramaphosa admitted that his government is partly to blame for the country’s electricity crisis.
“Poor policy decisions in the past, such as insufficient maintenance, poor management and widespread corruption, have left our electric power formula in critical condition,” Ramaphosa said.
It said more than 3 billion rand ($170 million) had been recovered from corrupt contracts at state-owned electric power company Eskom and that an additional five billion rand ($282 million) would be recovered from an ongoing lawsuit.
According to Ramaphosa, the government would be a good source of electricity by purchasing more renewable energy in the coming years.
Ramaphosa vowed to continue fighting corruption.
“We will have to make sure that . . . the culprits, wherever they are, face the full force of the law,” Ramaphosa said.
The convention opened several hours late due to difficulties in registering over 4000 delegates from across South Africa.
The five-day convention is expected to elect party leaders and adopt key policies to govern the country. Ramaphosa is re-elected as party leader at the five-year national convention and is the ANC’s top decision-making body.
The scandal surrounding Ramaphosa and factional rivalries within the ANC are expected to dominate the conference.
While it will seek to elect the party leader and the ANC’s top five leadership positions, 80 members of the party’s National Executive Committee will also be elected.
Key policy issues will be discussed through delegates in committee sessions that will be closed to the media. These focus on policies to promote the social and economic progress of sub-Saharan Africa’s most evolved economy.
The policies followed will have to be implemented through the country’s president, cabinet and legislature, as the ANC controls all those branches of government.
However, debates over those policies will most likely be overshadowed by factional battles within the ANC that will see Ramaphosa challenged through his political rivals.
Ramaphosa has been asked to step down following a damning parliamentary report that he may have damaged anti-corruption legislation by hiding undeclared money dollars on his farm in Phala Phala. The report questioned the source of the budget and why it did not report. to the police.
This week, Ramaphosa gained a special touch when Parliament voted against measures to initiate impeachment proceedings against him over the Phala Phala scandal. However, some ANC lawmakers voted in favor of his impeachment, underscoring their opposition to Ramaphosa.
At the conference, Ramaphosa is expected to be challenged by the party leadership through Zweli Mkhize, the country’s former fitness minister who was forced to resign from Ramaphosa’s cabinet over corruption allegations similar to COVID-19 source contracts.
Other leaders may be nominated for the convention seat, adding Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who lost to Ramaphosa in the leadership race at the last national convention in 2017.
The sharp divisions within the ANC were on display on the eve of the convention through former President Jacob Zuma’s announcement that he will launch a blanket prosecution of Ramaphosa for unspecified offences. Ramaphosa responded temporarily on Friday by saying it “rejects with utmost contempt the abuse of judicial procedure through Mr. Jacob Zuma and the perversion of the ‘nolle prosequi’ (user prosecution) provision. Ramaphosa said a user prosecution can only take a stand after the National Prosecutor’s Office says it will not prosecute a user and that has not happened.