For the position of deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa got 841 votes, Kgalema Motlanthe 16 and Tokyo Sexwale got only one vote

President Jacob Zuma was nominated for the presidency of the ANC uncontested in the KwaZulu-Natal nomination conference on Sunday.

  All branches of the ANC nominated Zuma for presidency and Gwede Mantashe for general secretary.

“These were the only two positions which were not contested in the top six,” said provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala.

Baleka Mbethe got the highest votes as national chairperson and deputy general secretary was Jessie Duarte.

The highest votes for treasurer went to the premier of the province Zweli Mkhize.

“Our province is once again leading the way by forsaking the foreign tendencies of coming to conferences for the sole purpose of voting for positions.

“The conference made history by dedicating more focus on policy matters in order to shape the transformation agenda and usher in a better life for all our people,” said Zikalala.

“The fact that more than one name per position were nominated was a clear indication ANC is a democratic organisation.”

He said the province agreed that the ANC should discuss the 30-year vision of the party, looking into the future.

“We will call on the NEC [National Executive Committee] to put in the agenda of the national conference the National Development Plan for discussion and adoption by the conference.”

The nominations which had come from the branch general meetings (BGMs) had not been easy process to achieve in a short space of time, he said.

A decision was taken at the conference that nominations taken at branch levels should be preserved.

This meant that each name nominated for the top six positions and additional members by a branch in the KZN province was put on the ballot paper unless 75% of the conference delegates voted against it.

KwaZulu-Natal has about 824 branches. A total of 793 had conducted their BGMs since October and the rest conducted their branches on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Nominations from the BGMs conducted in the last three days ahead of the conference were not part of the conference proceedings because they had not been audited, Zikalala said.

For the position of deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa got 841 votes, Kgalema Motlanthe 16 and Tokyo Sexwale got only one vote.

“This thing of saying KZN people think alike… from this nomination you must think twice if you were believing so,” Zikalala said after releasing these figures.

For the position of national chairman Mbete got 863 votes, Thandi Modise, six and Peggy Nkonyeni only got one vote.

On the position of treasurer-general, (KZN premier) Mkhize got 833, Duarte four, Trevor Manuel got three, Ngoako Ramatlodi two while there was no votes for Naledi Pandor.

For the position of deputy-general secretary, Duarte got 834 votes, Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula got six, Modise seven and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande got six votes.

After releasing the figures, Zikalala said there would be time at a later stage for the resolutions of the conference to be made public.

“It also means that we are going to the conference with these nominations.

It does not mean that [when] we take a decision that we will not engage with other people because we’ve taken a decision.

“We will still remain open for engagement with all other provinces…,” he said.

Over 900 delegates attended the two-day conference held at Olive Convention Centre in Durban’s North Beach.

The results were released at 11.57pm.

- Sapa