ANC NEC member Andile Lungisa has vowed to pack his bags and leave the ruling party if it goes to bed with the Democratic Alliance (DA) after the forthcoming general elections.
Lungisa said the biggest abomination the governing party can ever engage in is going into a coalition government with the official opposition.
So distasteful would be this move for Lungisa that it would be the final nail to his political career because an early retirement would be on the cards.
Lungisa said this during a wide-ranging interview with Sunday World Engage this week.
In his view, any talk that the ANC would enterain the DA should it drop below 50% in the upcoming general elections was nothing but “innuendo”.
As far as he was concerned, there was never such a decision at all in the NEC meetings he has attended since becoming a member of the structure in December 2022.
His views come as talk mounts within ANC circles that the “DA is the better devil” to go into partnership with should the national and provincial polls be hung.
The talk intensified last year, with ANC Veterans League President Snuki Zikalala being among the chief proponents of a coalition with the DA.
Lungisa says this will never happen because the DA is “the traditional enemy” of the ANC.
“Talks of coalition with the DA are a hullabaloo that you get from the streets to try to tone down the progressive character of our movement. It is nothing but innuendo,” said Lungisa.
“There is no meeting that I have ever attended that resolved about the DA. “I have not met a comrade of the ANC talking about the DA. There is nothing; we have no resolution on the DA.
“There is no ANC statement that ever carried anything about the DA. “The DA is there as a liberal organisation concentrated where the settlers came in in the Western Cape.”
Should the ANC ever entertain working with the DA to govern South Africa, it would have reached a point of no return, he charged. And of the many things that Lungisa has had to toe the line on, even when he does not agree, a coalition with the DA is where he would draw the line in the sand and pack his bags. Said Lungisa: “Some of us will never work with the DA. It will be that day when I will sit at home; I will never be with the DA.
“In my entire life, raised in the youth movement, it was to fight the DA.
“The day people decide to work with the DA is the day when I will retire and go home to milk my father’s cattle.”
Lungisa said everything the DA stands for is an antithesis of the founding principles of the ANC.
“The ANC must remain a progressive liberation movement. The ANC must remain a disciplined force of the left. The ANC must remain an anti-imperialist organisation.
“The only view that will never bind me is the view of working with the DA.
“Any other decision can bind me, but working with the enemy will never bind me; it is the day I will go milk my father’s cattle.”
