The civic organisation leader was making a presentation on behalf of the organisation at the economic summit of the alliance partners of the ANC on Friday evening.
Sanco provincial secretary Mike Soko has thanked the provincial leader of the ANC in the province, David Mabuza, for forging sour relations between the alliance partners, saying the squabble that was hitting the alliance partners hard in the province since 2010 now ‘seems to be managed extremely well’.
The alliance partners of the ANC – Cosatu, SACP and Sanco – were locked in a three day meeting discussing the issue of the ‘unhealthy’ rising unemployment in the province.
“It is humbling and exciting to be part of the revolutionary and functional alliance led by the ANC under the committed leadership of comrade DD Mabuza,” Soko said at the Nutting House Lodge in Mbombela.
“Sanco in the province has no doubt that the alliance summit spoke and the alliance is now alive,” he said.
“And comrade DD together with leaders of the alliance are fit for the purpose. The fragmentation which Sanco observed prior to the Alliance Summit seems to be managed extremely well and the alliance is now alive,” said Soko.
He then turned to Mabuza and bowed, before saying: “Thank you Chair”.
Earlier last month, after the 3 August 2016 local government elections, the South African National Civic Organisation in the Gert Sibande released a media statement and reported Soko was attacked by people wearing ANC T-shirts in Ermelo’s ward 1.
SEE HERE: Sanco cries foul after Ermelo’s attack
Members of the South African Communist Party in the province were also attacked during a Joe Slovo lecture in KwaNyamazane last year.
Fragmented alliance relations in the province are as a result of SACP leader Bonakele Majuba and Mabuza not seeing eye to eye.
The fight of the two powerful leaders has also resulted in the SACP in the province taking the resolutions to influence other SACP provinces to divorce the ANC, citing the reasons they were in a ‘poisonous’ alliance with ‘liberals’.
“We are not fighting against the ANC. But ourselves we are a registered political party and we have every right to contest,” one delegate told an SACP Mpumalanga provincial congress that elected Majuba for a fourth term three weeks ago.
Addressing the congress as new secretary of the party, Majuba himself said: “The discussion about state power is something that we have always been saying. In the special national congress [of the SACP] we went there and we sponsored the motion. The reason now there is a special congress resolution to further discuss the question of state
power is because of a motion that was sponsored by Mpumalanga. If we manage to influence others it will be bravo… and by the way other provinces never experienced what we experienced here. So that’s the difference and also we cannot wish to impose our experience to other provinces but the reconfigured alliance failed dismally to us and if it didn’t fail in other provinces it is still going to fail,” Majuba said to a thunderous applause at the eHlanzeni Vet College.
Majuba didn’t come to the summit on Friday but provincial ANC secretary Mandla Ndlovu apologised for him and told delegates he was going to be present on Saturday.
“He will join us together with Mandla Tibane tomorrow,” Ndlovu told delegates on Friday evening.
Soko at the economic summit looked at figures released recently concerning joblessness in Mpumalanga as well as the various sectors of its economy and called on the summit to come up with plans that will assist the youth and women economically.
“We are calling upon this summit to come up with graphic plans to set the economy towards growth in order to support employment of the people of Mpumalanga, especially the youth,” Soko said, adding women were the ones who were mostly affected by poverty, inequality and unemployment.
(edited by MLM)
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