Former President Kgalema Motlanthe says the ANC has to raise the bar

By: Natasha Archary

Former President Kgalema Motlanthe says the ANC has to set and maintain high standards and raise the bar beyond the 2024 National and Provincial elections.

Motlanthe joined Phemelo Motene on Point of View on Monday, 06 May representing the ruling African National Congress (ANC) ahead of the upcoming elections.

Addressing this year’s watershed elections, Motlanthe refutes sentiments that the ANC is losing power and remains confident that South Africans will continue to put faith into the party.

Motlanthe who has been leading the party’s campaign trails in Soweto and Ekurhuleni says the ANC wants to fulfill promises to deliver quality education and ensure access to good education.

The Former President says there needs to be an improvement in the quality of education to ensure that every child has an equal and fair opportunity to reach tertiary institutions.

Making a comparison between children who are enrolled in schools in suburbs, Motlanthe said the statistics of township school children reaching higher education institutions is far lower and this needs to be addressed.

Access to quality education

Under the ANC’s manifesto access to good and quality education and healthcare remains a priority.

“Let’s start with education, access is being addressed because the reports from the statistician general over the years attest to that.

The stats indicate that in public white schools and indian schools, those children actually end up in tertiary institutions. However, when you track children from black and coloured communities, only 22% of those children go to Grade 12.

Which means there’s a lot of leakage taking place there and therefore what is needed is an improvement in the quality of education and that improvement doesn’t just entail getting good passes.

It means that right from early childhood development centers, the teachers have got to have tertiary education qualifications because part of their role is to identify the strengths of these children from an early age.”

Motlanthe says this is how children can find their potential in either the artisanal or academic spheres.

ANC has to raise the bar

In 2017, Kgalema Motlanthe expressed that it would be good for the ANC to lose the 2019 general elections and has used his latest campainging initiatives for the party to clarify those statements.

Motlanthe says that his statements were at the time, to serve as a call for the party leadership to hear the cries of their supporters.

“The ANC has to set and maintain high standards, the bar has got to be raised going forward. That’s how renewal comes to fruition because the bar was almost laying on the floor.

That would be a discriminator, that’s what will set the ANC apart from other organisations. What many people may not know is that the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) is a breakaway of the ANC.

The United Democratic Movement (UDM) is a breakaway of the ANC, so are the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), COPE, and the newly formed MK Party.

The ANC has remained vibrant with a national footprint, whereas these breakaways, slowly but surely they wither away and the ANC has got to understand that.

It’s prestige and standing is a function of how it presents itself as a servant of the people.”
Former President Kgalema Motlanthe

Motlanthe served as the third president of South Africa from 25 September 2008 to 9 May 2009, following the resignation of Thabo Mbeki.

Thereafter, he was deputy president under Jacob Zuma from 9 May 2009 to 26 May 2014.