Captured Ramaphosa warns infighting will drive investors away

President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that the country's economy will battle to recover if infighting persists within the ANC and country, as investors would abandon the country.

Ramaphosa was speaking on Tuesday in Parktown, Johannesburg, where the president was holding a conversation with ANC Women's League (ANCWL) on the progress on the socioeconomic empowerment of women since 1994.

"The investing community wants to see us as South Africans being seriously and irrevocably committed to our own development. They do not want to see us fighting among ourselves. When they see us fighting and arguing among ourselves in the governing party or the country broadly, they think that there is political instability and they walk away with their dollars," Ramaphosa said.

Ramaphosa said the infighting was also encouraging investment strike by South Africa's established business.

"We want local investors to open up their wallets to invest in our economy and create jobs," he said.

Ramaphosa said the country was undergoing a very challenging economic cycle which was worsened by woes in Eskom and other state owned entities.

"These woes did not start yesterday. They did not start last year. They have been there for the past ten years or more and we now need to correct those issues," he said.

Ramaphosa said his administration was planning another investment summit later this year, in addition to last year's one which attracted almost R300-billion.

ANCWL President Bathabile Dlamini used the event to blast the ANC KwaZulu-Natal leadership over its decision to fire eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede on Monday.

Dlamini said the ANCWL was planning to meet with the provincial leadership today over its decision to fire Gumede.

"We are very unhappy about this culture that has been going on, a culture of making it easy to remove women from the positions they occupy," Dlamini said.

Gumede's ousting comes as she remains accused and charged of corruption and her case was postponed to January 2020 by the Durban Commercial Crimes Court on Thursday last week.

Dlamini said the removal of women from their positions has dealt a blow to the gender representation within deployments of the ANC in municipalities.

"At local government we started at 48% and we have gone down because at all times when there are regional conferences, those that are elected into leadership want to destabilise the whole municipality and they put themselves," she said.

"It should come to an end. We are not fellow travellers and women have been part of the struggle so we don't want a present, we also want to work," she added," she added.