Letter from the President: The ANC Lives! The ANC Leads!
Dear ANC Members,
Today, Friday the 19th of August, the National Executive Committee is meeting in Pretoria to discuss serious matters relating to organization building and renewal.
The special NEC meeting is intended to take place over four days, to allow members enough time to discuss organizational issues that we have not had time to tackle before due to time constraints and a usually packed agenda at ordinary NEC meetings.
We have decided to have no formal agenda for this meeting so that NEC members can be free to raise any matter that they feel could be an obstacle or catalyst to the building of the ANC that the founding fathers and mothers sought to build when it was founded in 1912.
We will touch on the preservation of the movement's character, culture and values in a changing context and new conditions of struggle. We want to discuss how to grow this movement further and make it attract more and more South Africans to its ranks.
We will be looking at better ways of promoting the core values of the ANC internally - unity, selflessness, sacrifice, collective leadership, humility, honesty, discipline, hard work, internal debates, constructive criticism and self-criticism and mutual respect.
We will also discuss the need for discipline within the ranks of the movement. The National General Council emphasized all these focus areas last September and the leadership has to ensure effective implementation.
The ANC also prides itself on its non-racial character, and the NEC members will no doubt also touch on issues relating to building support in Indian, white and coloured communities and promoting social cohesion and unity.
The ultimate objective is to make the ANC the organization of choice for one million South Africans by 8 January 2012. This is in line with the resolution of the 1942 ANC national conference, which directed that the organization must have one million members. It is our intention to have achieved or even surpassed the target by the time we celebrate the ANC centenary on the 8th of January next year.
The good news is that the ANC is growing and is in demand. The ANC has increased its membership by 198 057 members in the past few months. During the National General Council, the membership stood at 749 112. At the last count last month, our membership stood at 914 852 members. This means the goal of achieving a million members in a few months is achievable.
We remind every member, every cadre, every branch and every structure to become part of our recruitment and mobilization task, guided by the adage that "every member is an organiser". While recruiting, we must ensure that the growth in numbers does not change the character of the ANC. This means that we should carefully choose the people we recruit into the ANC.
We welcome the enthusiasm of structures of the movement and Leagues regarding this campaign.
- The ANC Women`s League will intensify its programmes of organising women in every corner of our country - in the churches, factories, farms, townships, villages and suburbs, attending to issues that affect their lives.
- The Veterans League will locate all veterans of our movement and actively bring them back into the ANC fold. We need the Veteran's League for guidance given their experience.
- The ANC Youth League will work harder to recruit more and more young people into the ANC, and make the organisation the natural political home of South African youth.
We are convinced that the ANC will continue to grow as the brand is strong and appeals to scores of South African people. It is the organization that delivered them from colonial oppression and apartheid, and the organization that is working with them to reverse the legacy of that period to achieve a better life for all.
The ANC Lives!
The ANC Leads!
JACOB G ZUMA
Statement issued by the African National Congress, August 19 2011
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