ANC’s biggest threat comes from within, says Ramaphosa

Ramaphosa made the remarks on Sunday evening, when he delivered the Oliver Reginald Tambo Memorial Lecture in Ekurhuleni.

He reflected on Oliver Tambo's legacy and how the party's support has narrowed.

"Africa's oldest liberation movement, the movement of John Langalibalele Dube and Chief Albert Luthuli, of Oliver Tambo, Lilian Ngoyi, Mama Albertina Sisulu, Tata Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, is facing severe challenges.

"We cannot but put this plainly, support for the African National Congress has declined. The trust deficit between us and the people has widened. There are some in our country who would want to rid the ANCs of each other.

"We have all seen the headlines, the policy papers, and the think-tank discussions following the main election. We've all heard the talk about a party that is in decline. We've heard about the ANC now joining the pantheon of national liberation movements that have, in quotes, failed in governance. All this said of an ANC that over the past 30 years  has brought about deep, fundamental, and lasting change to the lives of millions of South Africans."

Ramaphosa says the party will continue to implement policies for transformation of the economy.

"This is an ANC that has been a custodian of our country's constitution and has used the  instruments of government it leads to uphold human rights and the fundamental freedoms for all. All this progress, all this change and yet we find ourselves here today.

"We would be naive comrades to assume there are not those too willing to take advantage of our weakened state and to exploit the ANC's internal divisions for the advantage. As we gather here today to celebrate and to commemorate the life of Oliver Tambo,  it is not enough to merely reflect on a legacy that is now more significant than ever.

"We must use this opportunity to gain deeper insight into the context in which he led our movement. The similarities between then and now and the lessons that we can draw from his experience."

Ramaphosa added that an ANC weakened is not an ANC destroyed, it is an ANC supported.

"Our movement has been ridden with factional activity, naked careerism and personal omission.  It has in recent times been characterized by ill-discipline,  political intrigue, ideological rifts and rising intolerance of divergent viewpoints.

"Scholars of ancient history and those with a keen interest in this study will tell you how internal decay contributed to the fall of many a great institution. The extensive body of scholarship on the fall of ancient Rome, for example, points to how it was eventually torn apart, not by one large seismic event, but by thousands of small cuts.

"This was an urgent and foremost task, to do so, we must press ahead ourselves with the project of renewing and rebuilding our movement. So how then do we harness Oliver Tambo's legacy effectively to rebuild the ANC?

"We must start by looking at who is the ANC today. Who are the people who fill our ranks and occupy positions of leadership? Are they detachments of O. R. Tambo, loyalists to our movement and adherents to the ANC's founding  principles? Or are they just careerists, factionalists? Or are they just people who want positions to line their own pockets and advance their own interests? In the 1985 January 8th statement, O. R. Tambo posed the following question.

"Who are these revolutionary cadres about whom we speak? Where are they? They are not special people. It is we, men and women, young and old, black and white, who are involved in daily struggles, making sacrifices in pursuit of the people's cause."