While you’re ‘introspecting’, ANC, think on this
Leading ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang, who campaigned for the party, says the writing was on the wall long before voting day
THE electorate has spoken most eloquently and in the process delivered the majority of municipalities to the ANC. It has also unmistakably denied it the outright majority it previously held in the Gauteng metros of Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. As things stand, talk is now about the formation of governing coalitions.
Julius Malema’s EFF has emerged as kingmaker in the quest by leading parties to form local government administrations. Its chairman, advocate Dali Mpofu, has ruled out collaboration with the ANC.
And so it is that the organisation of which I’ve been a proud member for 58 years; that played the pre-eminent role in ushering in democracy in South Africa; and that has governed the country for 22 years, has lost control of the nation’s most strategic municipalities.
Cape Town, which hosts parliament, and the Western Cape were lost in earlier electoral battles. The turn has come for Tshwane, the seat of government, for Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni, in the nation’s economic hub. Gone, too, is Nelson Mandela Bay, so named in honour of the ANC’s own illustrious leader and venerated president of the republic.
Despite countrywide service-delivery protests that have increased with each passing year, the so-called rural municipalities have retained their faith in the ANC, albeit with declining levels of confidence.
For good measure, Vuwani in Limpopo staged a soccer tournament as a more attractive alternative to polling! A few months before, Vuwani residents had, in an orgy of savage destruction, laid waste to millions of rands’ worth of public infrastructure over a border demarcation dispute.
How did we get here, people have been asking. No amount of spin will change the harsh reality that the large numbers who used to flock to polling stations in the thrilling days of yesteryear to give their votes to the ANC have lost faith in the organisation.
Once fondly referred to by its adherents as the “glorious movement”, the ANC has fallen upon hard times.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says the ANC will engage in introspection, while others see the election results as a wake-up call for the ANC.
The belated introspection would be greatly assisted by noting the following:
On June 20 2016, 16 buses were set alight in Mamelodi alone when it was announced that Thoko Didiza would be Tshwane’s mayoral candidate;
In the first four months of this year, Gauteng experienced the highest proportion of service-delivery protests in the country, followed by the Eastern Cape.
Could it be that the electorate wished to make the point that South Africans come before the ANC?
Many of these took place in informal settlements and other underdeveloped areas where service delivery has remained problematic. Voters from these areas seem to be unhappy with the ANC — just like the “clever blacks”, the ANC president’s sarcastic tag for Gauteng’s middleclass black Africans;
One week before the elections, the ANC president strode the streets of Cape Town in the proud company of Marius Fransman, who the minister of water affairs said had been cleared of allegations of sexual assault. Not so, said secretarygeneral Gwede Mantashe. This confusion cannot have enhanced the credibility of the ANC among the voters;
Is anything to be made of the fact that the ANC president was part of the queues that ultimately delivered Nkandla to the Inkatha Freedom Party?
Could it be that, contrary to the ANC president’s understanding of priorities, the electorate wished to make the point that South Africans come before the ANC rather than the other way around? Perhaps the faithful, of whom there are many, were not amused by Zuma’s blasphemous boast about the ANC’s assured reign until the Second Coming. The reference may or may not have been to “Thixo wa se George Goch” [Good God!];
The voters may already be doubting that the ANC has the will to stop the rampant corruption that has cost the country so dearly. They may have recalled that when the ANC Women’s League president talked about everybody in the national executive having “smallanyana skeletons in the cupboard” Mantashe only rebuked Bathabile Dlamini for being undisciplined. He did not challenge her to prove her allegation. He merely said Dlamini’s swipe constituted bad timing; and
Last but not least, the voters may have wondered why, when the Constitutional Court found that the president had failed to uphold, defend and protect the constitution in his handling of the Nkandla corruption scandal, he failed to do the honourable thing and resign. And why ANC MPs in parliament thought that despite the court’s indictment, they should still defend his continued stay in office.
Good luck with the introspection.