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William Bulwane
The new face of the provincial ANC, William Bulwane (WB) who has advanced from regional and municipal structures to run the affairs of the ruling party in the province has experienced some turbulence along the way. Public Eye reporter, Tselane Moiloa (PE) had a chat him about ways in which the party will renew itself and attract back members who have lost faith in it.
PE: Could you tell us about your political background and how you got involved in the political game.
WB: I am the product of struggles in the communities we come from. I grew up in Tumahole, Parys and schooled in the area. As you grow up, you get politicised by other students who were there before you and at the end of the day you see that there is a need to also fight. The struggle was informed about what we wanted and what we did not want. With all of this I also had a strong church background – where you met characters like Frank Chikane. You also found yourself so deep into the politics (of the day) that you ended up in exile because of that involvement in that struggle. I was in Zambia for about four years.
PE: When did you come to the forefront as spokesperson?
WB: After the death of comrade [Teboho] Sikisi, I was approached by the premier to come and work with him as the spokesperson but I did not want to because I did not know what it entailed to be in that position. At that time, I was Speaker at Metsimaholo Municipality and I was very comfortable, until I was persuaded otherwise and I accepted the job. I resigned as Speaker and I still remember – it was the 9th of Februar9 2009 when I came to work at the Premier’s office as the spokesperson. I have enjoyed and fallen in love with it. I was doing the best I could to ensure that the image of the premier and government is maintained. In that office, we are support system for the premier to succeed.
PE: With regards to your new job, what does it entail?
WB: Being the secretary of the ANC is like being a CEO of a company – you will be managing the ANC. We have 319 branches that we must give management to. We will be giving management to the structure of the ANC, to the office of the ANC because it has staff; give political leadership to the cadres deployed in government – your legislature, your Free State caucus in parliament in Cape Town and also assisting with ensuring that cadres deployed in government are able to do their work diligently and that service delivery is happening. Our aim is to ensure that the ANC is still in power and gets to another 100 years.
PE: You come into this office when things are shaky for the ruling party, with division being a big factor right now. Now, as the new CEO, what are you going to do to turn things around and get a united front?
WB: Firstly, we must acknowledge that there is a problem, and go back to the foundations of the very same organisation that puts you into power, that organisation being the African National Congress. What are we saying as members of the ANC about the image of the African National Congress? How do we carry the principles and the beliefs of the ANC forward? Key and central being the principle of unity, because unity is paramount to the ANC. How do we bring everybody on board to say ‘Let’s unite the ANC’? That is the task also given by the president when he closed the conference at Parys – to try and get those comrades who did not come to the conference and unite the ANC in the province. The task ahead is to get into each and every branch of the ANC to discuss a united vision of the ANC.
PE: Could you please just elaborate on that?
WB: Yes, we must unite the ANC, but we must not make the mistake of leaving the ANC constitution in this regard as we move forward. There are those we still have to discipline, and that is what I mean when I say the constitution has to apply. There are disciplinary processes which have to apply to those that will be identified, but I cannot say who they are now. There are those that will be disciplined and there are those we will engage so that they come back to the ANC and work. They are still our members – we cannot be forgiving people who went to COPE and then we don’t forgive those who have wronged (but remained members). I must indicate that we are wielding those positive results – myself and the former secretary Sibongile Besani, we are working very well in terms of advice here and there. He was also part of the delegation that went to Gallagher Estate for the policy conference, representing the Free State. We are trying to say ‘everybody come’. We will talk to everybody we feel we need to talk to. At the end of the day, we must move forward with each and every member who is ready to come to the party. Those who do not want, we will apply the constitution.
PE: And what will happen after the application of the constitution?
WB: Those will be the issues of the disciplinary process but they are entrenched in the constitution. Once any decision is taken by the DC, it will be up to a political structure what do we do now.
PE: You just spoke about ‘those who have wronged the ANC’. Those on the other side of the fence may also say they have been wronged by the ANC. What does this blame game solve?
WB: We saw prior the provincial conference tendencies that are un-ANC taking place. Ordinary members of the ANC went to BGMs and you would see police vans and Nyala’s; people were beaten – they were not ANC. Anybody who was involved in such tendencies, those are the ones who wronged the African National Congress, irrespective of which side you were on. Those were wrong tendencies, and everybody who has done those things has to be brought to book. Now there is the tendency of burning houses of those comrades who went to the ANC conference. We cannot accept that. We have issued an instruction to the MEC of police ‘Do everything in your power, use all your state resources to get to the bottom of this’ because this is thuggerism. These are thugs. You cannot have people leaving in fear in this democratic South Africa. Once we allow that, we are going to allow a situation where we will be having no-go zones for others. ‘These people can’t go in there because it is a stronghold of so-and-so. So the police must do their job and responsibility, arrest those criminals. It is malicious, damage to property.
PE: If you are saying the MEC should use all state resources to solve the case of three houses belonging to three ANC members, wouldn’t that be seen as the party using its power whereas there are numerous other cases which remain unresolved? How would you counter that assertion?
WB: I think we have envisaged a free society, and as entrenched in the Freedom Charter there shall be peace, security and comfort. We are still living those principles. Those three people must enjoy that security and comfort wherever they are. Anybody who is tampering with that must be brought to book.
PE: Earlier, you said you are going to go to branches to talk about unity. How are these talks going to translate into action?
WB: The PEC gave us a programme on Monday that will make sure the PEC touches every corner of the 319 branches of the ANC and ensure that the ANC leadership is able to visit every branch and talk to ANC members.
PE: What will happen after that? Will it be just talk?
WB: We will talk with those branches of the ANC and rehabilitate and monitor the progress – that being whether we are progressing in ensuring that the ANC moves with speed to heal all these differences we went through as we approaching the conference.
PE: How easy or difficult is your job going to be in the Free State to bring about organisational renewal and faith in the party?
WB: We have developed recommendations to the conference. We are also saying we must look what are the things that will make us closer to the people and make sure they have trust in us. There are a number of things that make our people not have trust in us – corruption, nepotism – they are done by individuals of course not the ANC, but they have impacted negatively to the image of the ANC. You also need to up that image – your conduct.
PE: With regards to the new PEC, what are you going to do that has not been done in the past?
WB: As the PEC was sitting [on Monday], part of the things we said we must do is to do things differently, so that people can see that there is an ANC here. Majority of us were members of the old PEC, we know where we have relaxed so we are saying this time we must put more effort. That is why we said we must develop an invigorous programme that will take us to December. We will occupy each and every space that we have not. There were negative things said about the ANC, and we have allowed that image about division in the Free State that says ‘there is this group that supports Dukwana, there is this group that supports Magashule’; we have never used the media to demystify those things and put things into perspective. We just concentrated on the branches and said ‘leave the media, we are not run by the media’. But now we need to occupy that space and inform the community. We need to inform the community to say that the dust has settled, here is the direction, this is the reality of the situation and the ANC must go this way. Key and central, what we agreed upon yesterday as the PEC is to move with speed in ensuring that we have a political school in the province. We need to politicise our members, we need to develop cadres of the ANC.
We are also going to programmatise the social fibre in our community and deal with it vigorously – that is women and child abuse, because we have left that to social groups and the department dealing with that. We said that we need to occupy that space because it is ours as the ANC.