ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule has rubbished comments that the party was rescued by President Cyril Ramaphosa in the 2019 national and provincial elections. Magashule, speaking during a press conference at the IEC National Results Operations Centre in Pretoria said party supporters voted for the party not an individual. Asked about comments made by ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula that the party may have lost the elections had Ramaphosa not emerged as party president at the 2017 Nasrec conference, Magashule said: "That's nonsense. People are electing the ANC. It's not about any individual. How do you predict? Is Comrade Mbalula saying I was not going to be part of the campaign if the leader was somebody else?" he asked. Magashule said that ANC would have still received the same results which at the time of his press briefing saw the ANC sitting at 57% with about 90% of all voting districts declared.<doc-sep>Politics ANC’s Fikile Mbalula and Ace Magashule verbally slug it out over Cyril Ramaphosa BL PREMIUM The animosity between ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula and party secretary-general Ace Magashule continued this week when the two took potshots at each other in front of the media. On Thursday, Mbalula said the governing party may have sunk to 40% and lost the general elections, if ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa had not won the party’s presidential race at Nasrec in Johannesburg in 2017. Speaking to journalists at the IEC national results operations centre in Pretoria on Friday, Magashule blasted Mbalula saying he was talking “nonsense” and stressed that the voters were electing the ANC and not an individual. Mbalula did not take Magashule’s remarks lying down, saying the ANC secretary-general was not responding to him but to a “figment of his imagination”. In the build-up to the ANC’s national elective conference in 2017, Mbalula took to social media and posted that Magashule was definitely unsuitable for the position he held at the time, as Free State premier, arguing that “the ma...<doc-sep>Citizen reporter The ANC secretary-general refuses to give the president credit for the party's victory at the polls. ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule has told journalist Clement Manyathela that President Cyril Ramaphosa can’t take credit for the ANC’s victory in the 2019 elections. When asked if he agreed with people that Ramaphosa helped the party, his response was: “He is not candidate premier, it’s not about [the] individual, it’s about [the] ANC.” This contradicts remarks made by ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula on Thursday, who said the ANC would have descended to the 40% mark without Ramaphosa, TimesLive reported. “If the elections result at Nasrec was not reflective of change – you know, the way it did and the policy we adopted at Nasrec – if we did not actually take that direction, we would have actually sunk as the ANC,” he said. Without this change, Mbalula said he felt the party would have tanked in the 2019 elections. “Should we have gone on with that we would have probably dropped to 40%,” he said. Mbalula accused the DA of having campaigned as if “we are still in the Zuma era”. READ MORE: ANC bound to split into ‘Magashule and Ramaphosa camps’ – DA “They went for the president very hard and veering away from their own message, and they took a bad approach for them in this campaign,” he said. The ANC is headed towards a decisive victory at the time of publication, at which point over 90% of votes had been counted. The party was sitting on 57.54% nationally and had risen over the 50% mark in Gauteng – the party had dropped below this amount earlier on Friday. In KwaZulu-Natal, the party had 53.85%, and it looks set to secure decisive victories in the Northern Cape (57.54 %), North West (61.87 %), Limpopo (75.67 %), Eastern Cape (68.84 %), Mpumalanga (70.58%) and Free State (61.69 %). Only in the Western Cape, the DA’s customary stronghold, did the party come second, with 28.68%. The party seems to have done significantly better than in 2014’s municipal elections, which saw them achieve 53.91 % nationally. However, the party’s level of support has dropped significantly since the 2016 elections, when they achieved 62.15% nationally. (Compiled by Daniel Friedman) For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.<doc-sep>Magashule: Ramaphosa cannot take credit for ANC winning elections This is despite ANC leaders saying Ramaphosa played a big role in the party retaining majority. PRETORIA - ANC secretary general Ace Magashule said President Cyril Ramaphosa cannot take credit for the party's majority win in this year's elections. This is despite ANC leaders, including elections head Fikile Mbalula, saying Ramaphosa had played a big role in the party retaining majority. With over 90% of the votes counted, the ANC is sitting at 57.29%. But Ace Magashule contradicted Mbalula. Eyewitness News asked him if he thought Ramaphosa's popularity played a role in the ANC victory. “Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa is not the candidate premier. It’s about the ANC, not the individual.” He said the ANC was not about individuals. “The people who made us win the elections are volunteers, communities and people who love the ANC. The ANC has never been about an individual.”<doc-sep>
Magashule knows Ramaphosa was a game-changer, says the ANC elections head. JOHANNESBURG - African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Ace Magashule needs to understand that Cyril Ramaphosa is the president of the ANC. That’s according to ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula on Friday. Mbalula was speaking to Eyewitness News on the sidelines of the vote count taking place at the Electoral Commission of South Africa national results operation centre in Tshwane. “Don’t be allergic about Ramaphosa. He is your president.” On Friday, Magashule told Eyewitness News that Ramaphosa should not take the credit for the ANC’s likely win in the national elections. Mbalula said on Thursday if the ANC did not have Ramaphosa as president, the ANC would have dipped to 40% in its elections. He repeated this to Eyewitness News on Friday. Ramaphosa has been credited with playing a big part in the ANC retaining support - even by the movement’s leaders itself. Internal ANC polls also showed Ramaphosa polling much higher on support than the ANC itself. With over 90% of the votes counted, the ANC is currently sitting at 57.29% of national votes. Mbalula further said Magashule knew the polls were showing positively for the president. “Ramaphosa was a game-changer. He knows that,” Mbalula said. “Of course it’s not a one-man show. The president knows that. We know that." “We came into the election with the stigma that we are corrupt and only listen to ourselves … we are self-correcting,” Mbalula said. Eyewitness News asked Magashule earlier if he thought Ramaphosa's popularity played a role in the ANC victory. “Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa is not the candidate premier. It’s about the ANC, not the individual.” He added that the ANC was not about individuals. “The people who made us win the elections are volunteers, communities and people who love the ANC. The ANC has never been about an individual.” The ANC has been dogged by factional differences throughout the elections, with some saying former president Jacob Zuma’s supporters were organising to challenge Ramaphosa.