Mbalula mines ‘fertile’ ethekwini
Infrastructure, grants and electricity top the ANC secretary general’s week in Kwazulu-natal
ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula led the party’s drive to mine ethekwini’s high-density voter districts this week in a bid to shore up its support in the metro, where it hopes to gather 1.5 million votes on 29 May.
Mbalula worked Anc-supporting neighbourhoods in the north of the city for three days. The national executive committee was deployed to Kwazulu-natal, once its stronghold, which its opponents hope to take off the governing party after two decades in power.
The ANC knows winning ethekwini metro is the key to taking the province — about 40% of the total vote is located there — and to retaining its overall majority. The party has calculated that 50% in ethekwini will translate into almost 15% when the national ballots are counted.
A collapse of water and electricity provision; long term infrastructure damage sustained during the April 2022 floods; huge unemployment and Jacob Zuma’s breakaway umkhonto wesizwe (MK) party stand in the way of it doing so.
The ANC fell below 50% in the metro in the 2021 local government elections and it has now pumped resources into its campaign in ethekwini — and the rest of Kwazulu-natal — to try to turn the city back into an electoral asset.
A team from Luthuli House’s national organising department was sent to ethekwini more than three months ago to boost the capacity of the regional and provincial election teams and will remain in place until the votes have been cast.
They have broken the city into north, west, south and central zones, using the voters’ roll to focus on wards and voter districts with high numbers of registered ANC voters and ensure that they turn out to vote on 29 May.
Mandla Moropa, the organising team member responsible for north Durban, said this week that they would focus on the “fertile and productive” voter districts across the six sub-zones they have divided it into.
While the door-to-door campaign and roadshows create high visibility for the ANC, he said the real focus is on ensuring they stay connected with those who are registered until voting day. The use of digital mapping and spreadsheets has allowed them to track exactly who and where their voters are.
“There is no sense in pushing resources into areas where we are not strong. We know who our voters are, where they are and that is who we are focusing on now,” Moropa said.
Each ANC branch has been given a target of registered voters its volunteers need to reach during various phases of the campaign between registration and voting day.
Ward 60, which Mbalula visited on Tuesday, has a quota of 9200 registered voters to reach, a number its volunteers had passed ahead of the door-to-door campaign this week.
On Wednesday, Mbalula was at Mhlasini in ward 102, which has a population of about 35 000 and which battles for water and electricity and in which a bridge was washed away in the 2022 floods.
ANC supporters who had turned out to listen to him had just finished a chorus of “Run, Zuma, run” when Mbalula arrived with ethekwini regional secretary Musa Nciki and a road full of party volunteers in tow.
Armed with promises of a basic income grant, jobs through the national youth service and an improvement in the supply of electricity and water, Mbalula called on residents to stick with “your movement” so that it could finish the job it started in 1994.
Addressing people from the deck of the Buffalo Soldier — the 1990s vintage ANC Kwazulu-natal election bus — Mbalula said the government acknowledged failings in providing services, infrastructure and jobs.
It has already begun work on infrastructure, while transformers were being installed at more than 90 sites across the north and west of the metro, he said, adding: “We are fixing the bridge that was flooded and we are building a road. This is not something we are saying, we are going to do, it’s already happening.”
Promises of electricity connections to each household, running water and flushing toilets all met with cheers from the audience gathered at the taxi rank in Hazelmere Road, as were those of improved grants and the lifting of the age entry cap of 35 currently imposed on state jobs.
Mbalula told residents young people who had dropped out of school would be recruited into the national youth service, through which the ANC hopes to create 2.5 million jobs.
The experience requirements that prevent young people from getting first-time jobs would also be lifted.
“Young people must get experience at work. Where else are they going to find it if they don’t get it at work?” he said.
Mbalula warned against following Zuma out of the party and into the breakaway MK party, saying he and his supporters “are the people who want to take our freedom backwards”.
Mbalula said that Zuma, like other former presidents, had “had his chance” and that it was now the turn of President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose term in office would also eventually come to an end.
“It didn’t end well,” Mbalula said of Zuma’s presidency. “We don’t have anything against him. We are not following anyone — we are following the ANC.”
Mbalula said Zuma had “wasted” the time he served as president by “dumping” the party and was now leading “the people who want to take our freedom backwards”.
“He dumped the ANC. He fought for it his whole life and then he decided to dump it,” Mbalula said.
He also warned about voting for those who would “finish” what resources the state still possessed if they came to power.
“They will finish the money for social grants. They will finish everything. People who are employed by the government will no longer be paid. How can you vote for such people?” Mbalula said.
Although his message was well received by the audience, consisting mainly of pensioners and the unemployed, many residents of Mhlasini went about their daily business.
An unemployed 26-year-old man said he would not vote for the ANC — or any other party. “There is no party that is going to help me get a job. Who must I vote for?”
Speaking after the roadside rally, Mbalula told the Mail & Guardian that the ANC was focusing on “talking to its voters where they are found in large numbers” at this stage of the campaign. It was using street meetings, door-to-door and constant contact visits between its volunteers and its voters to do so. “This is a very important base of the ANC, very significant. These are densely populated areas where our people have registered in big numbers.”
“It is very important that we keep our base energised, that we talk to our people, not once, but many times before the 29th. We want to talk to each person more than 10 times.”
Mbalula said the concern was not that ANC voters would go elsewhere, but that they would stay at home, so contact with them would continue to ensure they voted on 29 May. “The ANC has loyal supporters who are not looking east or west, but stay back if they are not engaged. When we talk to them they raise concerns and criticism — that is to be expected.”
The party plans to deploy its former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe in Kwazulunatal along with Ramaphosa from Saturday, ahead of the final drive to get its voters to the polling booths.
“We don’t leave. We just came to encourage and to give support. We leave on the 30th,” Mbalula said.