Pretoria – When delegates go to the ANC elective conference in December, they will have to choose between allowing the rot to continue and electing leadership that will confront the issues facing South Africa, former KwaZulu-Natal premier Senzo Mchunu said on Friday.

Speaking at the National Education Health & Allied Workers’ Union’s (Nehawu) 30th anniversary celebration event in Pretoria, Mchunu said the conference would be about stopping the country from becoming “a nation of pigs”.

The former KZN ANC chairperson likened corruption and state capture to that of “a pig which just eats all day long.

“My argument here is that we can’t be a nation of pigs, you know a pig, early in the morning it starts eating, during the day it’s still eating, in the evening it’s still eating,” said Mchunu.

“So the conference is about preventing us from becoming a nation of pigs,” he said.

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He accused the current ANC leadership on being silent on corruption and said the upcoming elective conference would present the party with an opportunity to “offload the politics of compromise and cronyism”.

“So we will need to go to Nasrec to choose. It is either we choose the deepening crisis and decay of our state or we choose a path that will resolve and shut down all this drama once and for all. It is only then that there will be national confidence in the leadership and the country’s economy,” said Mchunu.

Mchunu, who was named on presidential hopeful Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s slate, added that he hoped the new leadership would work towards restoring confidence in the ANC. 

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South African Communist Party Deputy General Secretary, Solly Mapaila, who touched on issues of state capture and the controversial Gupta family, told Nehawu members that they should not allow ANC structures to be bought and that they should choose good leaders.

Mapaila said if ANC processes were bought and manipulated, it would be difficult to sustain the Tripartite Alliance.

“We are simply saying it would be impossible to work with people who continue the agenda of state capture; the agenda of corruption; the defence of the Guptas and President Zuma,” said Mapaila. 

“We feel like that arrangement won’t work for us, that is why the cleansing of the rot must happen and must start with this particular conference,” he said.