Mashatile says ANC doesn't blame KZN leaders for poor electoral performance in the province
ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile visited party structures in the province on Tuesday, encouraging branches to focus on rebuilding.
Deputy ANC President Paul Mashatile at Luthuli House as the party marks 100 days of the GNU.
DURBAN - African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Paul Mashatile says the party does not blame its KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) leaders for the party’s poor electoral performance.
This as the party in the province lost its majority and obtained only 17% of the votes during the May general polls.
Mashatile visited party structures in the province on Tuesday, encouraging branches to focus on rebuilding.
READ: ANC postpones decision on Gauteng and KZN PECs
Mashatile also embarked on a door-to-door campaign ahead of next week's by-election in Msunduzi municipality.
The ANC's national working committee is set to receive a report detailing the party's poor performance in KZN and Gauteng next Monday.
With wide speculation about KZN being disbanded, Mashatile had this to say:
“When we invited the province is because we wanted to assess the challenges that we had during the election we did with KZN and yesterday [Monday] we did that with Gauteng. There was speculation that we were calling the province to disband - that is not the case.”
READ: 'No blame game, we're all in it together': ANC's Mbalula on electoral loss in KZN
While KZN and Gauteng had the worst poor performance for the party in the polls, Mashatile said most provinces did not perform up to the party’s expectations.
“We are not blaming the leadership of KZN because if you look at the whole country, you’ll see that many parts of the country we didn’t do well - it’s not that just these two provinces, there’s nothing on the table that says the leadership says we must disband the province of KZN.”
Mashatile, however, emphasised the need to work on recovering lost ground, adding that unity among ANC branches would be vital.