Draft Strategy and Tactics Document of the Convention

Introduction

1. In the light of the imminent launch of the new political party in South Africa, here in referred to as the Convention, we express our strategy and tactics that outlines our characterisation and our objectives.
2. The Convention can be characterised as part a splinter from the ANC and its Alliance partners and part a converging of various other groups and individuals in the South African society who share some or all of the concerns of the leaders of the Convention or who have their own concerns that are not related to those of the leaders of the Convention.
3. Our strategic objectives can be broadly defined as the strengthening of democracy through the weakening of the ANC. Our view is that since some of our leaders were not elected into the leadership of the ANC, the ANC has become too strong and thus presents a threat to our democracy as enshrined in our constitution.
4. The reason the ANC is strong its because of its history and its current policies. Since we cannot do better we will have to copy from them and hope that some of its members will be foolish enough to follow us.
5. We believe the time is ripe for the Convention to be launched.

History of the Convention

6. Obviously we do not have a history of our own. We will selective select from the history of the ANC all that suits us and define it as our history. To avoid contradictions, we will omit parts of the ANC history that talk about unity, ill-discipline, democratic centralism, traitors, democracy, deployment and other related phenomena.
7. From the ANC we will mainly copy the parts that talk about the Freedom Charter, freedom, liberation, freedom of speech, and related stuff.
8. Maybe in this way we can avoid peoplw noticing our explicit hypocrisy.

Character of the Convention

8. Ours is a Convention of the concerned. No matter what you are concerned about, you are welcome to the Convention.
9. According to us, the National Democratic Revolution is over. The outdated language of a Revolution is no longer relevant. It’s like some people are politicising everything. As a country we need to chill.
10. We are tired of the ANC talking about the poor, the working class and all those things. We just want a stable country.
11. A stable country is where rich people have space to get richer and poor people can get poorer. Those leftist in the ANC do not understand that the reality is that the poor will always be poor. Actually poor people are not welcome in the Convention as they will scare the investors with their poverty.
12. In fact all the concerns we have expressed about the ANC are mainly based in their use of political language. They should lighten up. Stop singing Umshini Wami and play nice gospel CDs like Lundi at the rallies.
13. Even though we say we leave the ANC because it is not doing the Freedom Charter we welcome all people even those who do not know what the hell is the Freedom Charter. It’s ok. All that counts is your vote not your knowledge of the document.
14. If you support us, you are likely to be alone in your ward, so you definitely will be our candidate for the Mayor in your area. If you are lucky you can even be a Premier, a provincial minister or a national minister. The ANC has too many members, you will never get anywhere with it.
15. Worse if you have poor leadership skills. However as the Convention we do not mind. We won’t need your leadership skills in a long-term anyway.
16. We are aware that in terms of the ANC, joining the Convention amounts to ill-discipline, but we suspect that once you join the Convention you will no longer be ill-disciplined. You will have to respect the decisions of the upper structures just as you did in the ANC, if you were an ANC member when Lekota was Chairperson.
17. We are going to hold a lot of rallies now until the elections. Unfortunately after that we will have to focus on our work in Parliament as leadership to represent your concerns.
18. In this was the Convention will disintegrate due to differing of views. Luckily as leaders we are guaranteed jobs for the next 5 years.

Vision and Mission

19. As stated earlier, we mainly want to weaken the ANC. It is too strong. It also has too many good leaders, that is why we were not elected. The same applies to our fellow losers in provinces, regions and branches. Including those who are still going to lose in the list process.
20. Although we doubt that the ANC will ever be weak, at least we join the DA, UDM, IFP, ID and others in pretending to be doing something.
21. Our strength is that unlike the ANC, we can promise people anything including that which we cannot do. We know we will never win so we won’t have to do it.
22. So we do not have a comprehensive vision because that is rhetoric, our mission is clear; members must elect us back into Parliament where we belong. What else can we do besides that?
23. Our mission is to provide psychological relief on a short-term basis for all those who are stressed (concerned about petty things politically or personally). Really now, some of us have been members of the ANC for a long time what else do you expect us to offer in a long-term.
24. We must appeal to capitalists so that they can fund us. Poor people are of no use. Maybe we can give them T-shirts so they can vote for us.
25. Since we are launching on the basis of ill-discipline and anger. We will have to elect the angriest into leadership in order to sustain ourselves at least until the elections.
26. Perhaps when this anger dies down some people will go back to the ANC. We need to make sure that by the time they are sober, we already got their votes.

Conclusion

27. We won’t pressure our members to go through the eye of the needle to become leaders they have to go through the eye of (an open) boom gate.