The ANC is confident its structures in the Western Cape have accepted the interim leadership structure it has put in place following its decision to disband the provincial executive committee (PEC).

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule said this following a one-day meeting of the party's national executive committee (NEC) in Cape Town yesterday. The NEC spent the weekend briefing branches on the decision to dissolve its PEC earlier this month following years of lack of unity, factionalism and a poor electoral showing in the May general elections.

There has also been criticism, including from the SA Communist Party, of the NEC's decision to include leaders of the dissolved PEC in the interim provincial committee (IPC). The IPC has been given nine months to lead the ANC into a provincial congress to elect new leadership. Lerumo Kalako, a former ANC MP who is the convenor of the interim leadership, said members of the dissolved leadership were still capable of contributing.

"Those comrades can still contribute in building the organisation, in assisting towards what we must achieve, which is primarily unity of the ANC and the unity of communities in the Western Cape.

"One of the issues confronting us in the province is the middle class drifting away from the ANC precisely because we don't give them space, as we used to before, to participate in the programmes of the ANC and to voice their opinions. So we've been given a strict instruction to try to correct that. And that goes also to sectors such as religion, youth and women and people with disabilities which used to be in the fold of the ANC."