After almost four years in the political wilderness due to factionalism and divisions, the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), the fourth alliance partner of the ANC, has been brought back into the fold.
Sanco will now be officially represented and have a say in ANC gatherings as was the case in the past.
This was after the secretary-general of the ANC, Fikile Mbalula, wrote on Friday to structures of the governing party and told them that the civic organisation has now got its house in order, therefore, it must now be given a platform during their events.
Sanco's factional wars started in 2019 when there were parallel conferences that elected parallel structures.
The ANC then resolved not to include any of the structures until their fight has been settled by the courts where they have dragged each other.
Now that the series of court cases have been withdrawn and an interim structure is in place, Mbalula said they should be included in ANC's programmes.
This comes as the civic organisation said it was ready to start helping the ANC with the campaigns for the 2024 provincial and national elections.
In his letter to ANC structures, Mbalula said his directive is based on the decision of the meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) between July 7 and 9.
He said the meeting received a progress report on initiatives to unite Sanco and then took the decision.
“Sanco has experienced challenges arising from parallel National Conferences held in 2019.
“As a consequence, the Alliance decided that Sanco would not be invited to participate in its activities until such time as it had addressed these challenges.
“Following various initiatives and interventions, the two groups have disbanded their structures and committed to rebuild one organisation.
“The NEC decided to support this unity initiative and to support the inclusion of Sanco back into the fold to the Alliance,” Mbalula wrote in the letter.
He then gave the instruction that Sanco should be brought back and have a role during ANC’s gatherings.
“We call on all ANC structures to henceforth work with Sanco in the activities of the movement.
“The united Sanco initiative is led by Comrade Richard Hlophe as National Convenor and Comrade Mike Soko as the National Coordinator,” Mbalula directed.
The civic organisation has already started taking part in alliance gatherings.
On Friday, the KwaZulu-Natal chapter of Sanco took part in the alliance summit which involved the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in Durban.
Speaking at the summit, Sizwe Cele, the provincial coordinator of Sanco's interim structure in KwaZulu-Natal said their past squabbles and divisions have cost them dearly, but the good thing is that the movement has learnt its hard lessons.
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