Mashaba’s election mojo goes missing in action
Due to the party’s sheer size, the overall story of every election is the story of the ANC. Between 1994 and 2004, it was the story of its power. By how much will it win? Will it win all the provinces? Will it get a two-thirds majority? If it does, will it change the constitution to scrap some of the checks and imbalances characteristic of a liberal democracy?
Post 2004, especially after Polokwane triggered the 2008 split that led to the birth of COPE and the Jacob Zuma-inspired transformation of the ANC into an increasingly rural party, elections became a tale of the party’s decline. Would the emergence of COPE cause the ANC to shrink below 60%, would the party lose the Eastern and Western Cape — these were some of the questions as the country readied for the 2009 general election.
Five years later, following the emergence of Julius Malema’s ANC Youth League in its new colours as the EFF, similar questions dominated conversations.
Although 2019 was slightly different in that there had been no fresh ANC breakaway, the story of decline continued to dominate.
In those elections it was about how much the party’s constituency was willing to forgive the party for its complicity in the sale of the country’s sovereignty to Zuma’s other favourite family, the Guptas.
As the results showed, many did turn their backs on the ruling party but not enough for the ANC to sink below the 50% plus one threshold needed to form a government.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s New Dawn message resonated with enough voters for the ANC to secure a sixth successive term in government.
As the next general elections draw closer, the New Dawn is a distant memory. The turbulence of the past five years — some of it the result of factors beyond the country’s control and the rest self-inflicted wounds on the part of the ANC — is threatening to turn Nelson Mandela’s party into the first liberation movement in southern Africa to be ousted from power at the ballot box.
But even as the ANC story dominates every poll, there is always a subplot.
In the run-up to the 2021 local government elections much attention was on Herman Mashaba’s then new outfit — ActionSA.
Long popular as one of the few black entrepreneurs to succeed despite the racist system, Mashaba rebranded himself as a serious political player while serving as mayor in a DA-dominated Johannesburg coalition government.
But after falling out with the DA leadership amid allegations that he had become too close to his EFF partners in the metro administration, Mashaba quit the party and set up his own stall. With him, he took some of the DA’s most promising talent — especially black talent.
Ahead of the local government elections, people were talking about him as a serious contender for mayor in
Johannesburg and ActionSA’s presence was felt everywhere.
His reputation as a crusader against illegal immigrants and an enemy of red-tape that discourages small and medium enterprises won him support across the class divide.
At the polls he did relatively well, making a strong showing in all Gauteng’s metros, giving the ANC a run for its money in Soweto and registering impressive numbers in DA-controlled suburbs. The 2021 results were seen as a springboard from which he could launch a serious challenge at national level this year.
Perhaps it is still early days, but Mashaba and ActionSA seem to be missing in action this time around. A few years ago, political pundits thought Mashaba had so much potential that some were predicting it was only a matter of time before ActionSA overtook the DA as the main opposition.
Yet recent surveys and opinion polls do not rank the party that highly. At least one poll suggests that if the DA is going to be unseated as the country’s second-largest party, it will be at the hands of the Red Berets.
Yes, Mashaba is regularly on TV giving interviews, he publishes the occasional article in this newspaper and elsewhere, and his Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal representatives keep the party in the news; but where is that energy we saw in 2021? Has the party run out of steam even before participating in its first national elections?
Could it be that its brand is being swallowed by its prominent role in the multiparty charter? Opposition leaders who refuse to join the charter before the elections say they don’t want to risk being seen as mere extensions of the DA — the party that first came up with the idea. Is ActionSA now suffering that fate?