ANC doesn't want members to vote because they want arranged leadership: Kgalema Motlanthe

The African National Congress (ANC) wants to arrange leadership and this is why they want a deputy to automatically succeed the president.

This is according to Deputy Kgalema Motlanthe who was responding to accusations by ANC provincial chairperson in Mpumalanga David Mabuza that he broke tradition and sewed divisions within the ruling party when he challenged President Jacob Zuma at the Mangaung elective congress in 2012.

"I must give it to DD Mabuza that he's correct actually in the sense that what is really the crying out for is the right to arrange leadership," said Motlanthe.

"They don't want members of the ANC to elect whomsoever, so that's why he's not basing his accusation on the provisions of the ANC Constitution but he's basing it on so-called tradition and it's very strange that that tradition didn't apply in 2007 in Polokwane, it only applies in Mangaung and so on."

Motlanthe was speaking to Xolani Gwala on Radio 702 where he said that Mabuza's complaint is that ANC members "expect to elect where else his type really want to make the arrangements".

Motlanthe said that slates that circulate prior to ANC elective conferences did not exist prior to the conference in Polokwane in 2007.

"Up to Polokwane conference, there were no slates. Members were nominating from branches, you had to be nominated from branches and all of that, nomination lists would be consolidated national level at the conference specifically convened for that purpose.

"If you go back to the organisational report, the Polokwane conference, this matter was raised very sharply of slates and why it was wrong to allow that because it's the worst way of corrupting internal democratic processes."