THE ANC in the Western Cape said it is working to claw the coloured community back to the party’s structures amid the lack of representative demographics within its ranks.
ANC provincial chairperson, Vuyisa Tyhalisisu, said they acknowledged that the non-racial character of the party was a great weakness in the province.
“It is a real challenge because our base in the (City of Cape Town) metro, in particular the coloured community, has been eroded.
“The ANC is still strong in the rural coloured community. The majority of the work we need to do is in the metro,” Tyhalisisu said.
His comments come after President Cyril Ramaphosa called on the party to continue to advocate for non-racialism within the organisation.
Ramaphosa said the ANC had committed itself to non-racialism, where all people of the country should feel at home in the party.
“The ANC must not just be an organisation of a certain group of people,” he said.
Ramaphosa made the statement on Wednesday after he observed that there were not many coloured people at the cake-cutting ceremony in Athlone, a coloured area.
“We must take up the task of reaching out to other national groups in the country, bring them in the ANC, and make sure they feel at home in the ANC so that next time when we meet in an Athlone meeting place, it must be representative of the various national groups in the country,” he said.
Tyhalisisu said noted that there were many new emerging coloured political parties in the Western Cape.
Apart from the GOOD Party led by Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille, there are other new political outfits in the form of the National Coloured Congress, Patriotic Alliance, and the People’s Movement for Change.
“What is bad is that they mobilise on the basis of colour in those areas, but it is work we are conscious of. We are busy planning how to regain ground in those coloured areas,” Tyhalisisu said.
He noted that black people in the Western Cape were not serviced by the DA, whether in Mitchells Plain or Khayelitsha.
“As conditions are deteriorating, people want alternative political homes where they feel comfortable,” Tyhalisisu said.
Ramaphosa said the ANC’s work in the province was cut out.
“We are in the rebuilding phase. Part of rebuilding the ANC is to make sure we appeal to all national groups in our country, in the Western Cape in particular. We have a lot of work to do to reclaim that affection and love the Western Cape used to have for the ANC,” he said.
Ramaphosa said they had not given up and that they were not an organisation that gave up.
“We are going to continue to work with our leaders on the ground to make sure the ANC is revived. We are going to revive and bring it back to the state it was years ago,” he said.
While acknowledging that the ANC lost ground in the Western Cape, Ramaphosa is confident they can reclaim it.
“We know how to rise again. We are determined to do so and we are going to do it. You watch the space.”
He stated that the organisational work needed to be done in the province was quite massive.
“We are going to focus on the Western Cape and that is why the January 8 celebrations are here,” Ramaphosa.
Unisa political science lecturer, Professor Dirk Kotze, said it made sense for the ANC to hold the celebration in Khayelitsha because it was its stronghold in the province.
“The ANC did lose about 9% of votes in past elections in the province. They are 20% and it is declining all the way. They need to arrest this decline and hopefully turn it around,” he said.
“There will be good support for them tomorrow for the event and they have to demonstrate that the fact they were governing in the province 20 years ago, there is a potential to go back. They must communicate to the public and their own supporters to give them hope and give enthusiasm as a motivation,” Kotze said.