Power FM, Thursday afternoon

Elections. What has been our own lived experience and learning of the GNU since 2024? It's almost halfway before the end of the current term of the seventh administration. What lessons have we acquired? Are we confident enough that those lessons can be taken to the local government and serve the interest of our people? For me, that's where the question is going to lie. I don't think that the NC must automatically say we want to be in government at all costs. So we're going to form coalitions with whoever.

Agrees with us on any question. I think the fundamental issue will be: what is it that is going to work for the people of the areas or the cities where these coalitions are likely to be entered? Just before I let you go, what then becomes your message to people who say we've been warning you as the ANC that if you don't pay attention to some of our issues, our concerns around how these municipalities are run,

and some of the people that you've deployed. I mean, the Auditor General's report kept on telling a story about certain municipalities where there was a recurrence of a fruitless expenditure of audit outcomes that were not really palatable, but it looked like the ANC still insisted on keeping certain people irrespective of the state of those particular municipalities.

How then do you respond to people who say, but we've been warning you about these things? Well, I think an honest response to those people is to say, sure, you are quite right. You have warned us. We listened and we had you. And you demonstrated your unhappiness in 2024. We decided what we needed to do as we prepare for the local government elections. In my own view, we did not do enough, as a consequence of which we were not able to.

Regain the confidence of the same population. We now hear where we are. We've got to find a way in which we turn things around, especially in my own view, on the state of the organization. It can be right that you go to an election campaign and you get so much undermined at a word level and in almost a number of words within a minute's paradigm. It's a statement, it's a very serious statement about the state of the organization and the quality of leadership.

At all levels of the ANC. If there's anything that, in my own view, is unavoidable as we will have to do an assessment of these elections, would be what is this quality of the leadership we have? Who leads this branch? To what extent is he inspiring confidence of the population? Who's leading this REC, this PEC, and this national executive committee? Is this a leadership that is able to inspire the confidence of the masses of the people? If the answer is no, we then have to do something about that. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks.