ANC’s election plans laid bare in recording
Some ANC leaders seen as letting the side down just weeks before polls that could force party into a coalition government
President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged the ANC top brass to “put their shoulder to the wheel” to ensure the party wins at least 57%
or about 11-million votes in the May 29 polls, warning the election is “ours to lose’’.
In a leaked recording of an ANC national executive committee (NEC) elections meeting last week, Ramaphosa read the riot act to his fellow ANC leaders, saying there would be consequences if they failed to make a campaigning contribution.
The recording is being circulated in ANC and opposition circles.
“We need to add some ‘oomph’ to our election campaign, we need to do much more,” Ramaphosa told the meeting.
The recording shines a revealing light on the party’s battle plan, with pre-election polls predicting it could lose its absolute majority for the first time since 1994 and be forced into a coalition with smaller opposition parties. The ANC has polled below 50% in at least five polls in recent months.
Although the president stressed that the ANC was not a “one-person leadership” party, the meeting heard from ANC elections head Mdumiseni Ntuli that the president would lead the campaign, with a special focus on first-time voters.
Ramaphosa said it had been reported to the national working committee that “there are a number of NEC members who are not really meeting their commitments”.
“And sometimes, our structures wait and wait and NEC members don’t appear. And that deflates them. We’ve got volunteers around the country, and we need to reinvigorate them. We have to ensure that they really do the real work.
“And we as NEC members [must be] there to support them. As they mobilise our people through their door-to-door, we must be among them. And if we are among them, people on the ground really get motivated, enthusiastic, and in many ways that’s what is needed.”
He said all ANC leaders must put their shoulders to the wheel.
“All of us must be dog-tired through the weekend We must get up and get into weekdays and be able to commit more time to this campaign. We are not a one-person leadership movement; we are leadership, and we pride ourselves on that. Many voices must be articulating one message.’’
At a campaign event in eThekwini yesterday, Ramaphosa told a church gathering that it is “God’s will that the ANC governs; after the election I am still going to be president”. He said opposition parties were “nibbling at the edges, that is all they’ll ever do”.
One of the decisions at the elections meeting last week was that Ramaphosa would campaign in areas where an ANC-led administration had solved a local problem or was in the process of doing so.
Ntuli told the meeting: “We are targeting at least a minimum of 11-million voters We’ve got 27.6-million South Africans on our voter’s roll. If we assume that the turnout will be around 70%, that will be about 19million South Africans going out to cast their vote. Of course 57% of those would be 11million.”
The 57% target would match the party’s performance five years ago and would be “a decisive victory”.
Ramaphosa’s door-to-door activities were helping to win over undecided voters, who then made public statements declaring they would vote ANC, Ntuli said. These were captured by the ANC communications team for broadcast.
Describing party efforts to buff the president’s image, he said Ramaphosa’s campaign programme was crafted to take him to places where service delivery problems were being fixed and to avoid places where angry residents were frustrated with the party’s record.
“Between now and the elections, we do not want to see a situation where the president will appear in the place of a crisis, and a crisis without a solution at hand or without any solution being implemented,” Ntuli said.
The ANC would send its entire NEC leadership to engage communities in the two key provinces where the party’s absolute majority was at risk. They would spend a week in KwaZulu-Natal and then two full weeks in Gauteng.
It also emerged that the ANC, in a last throw of the dice to retain power, is preparing to flood the airwaves with adverts from government departments funded by the taxpayer boasting of its successes since 1994.
The ANC has not flooded the streets with posters in the same way the main opposition parties have, and it appears to be planning to shift the campaign emphasis onto the efforts of its leaders.
Ntuli presented the strategy to guide the ANC in the last 40 days before the vote. He emphasised the need for “seamless” integration of party activities across all levels, from regional to national, and including the activities of its Cosatu and SACP allies.
He singled out transport minister Sindisiwe Chikunga as having “done very well” in communicating achievements.
“We need something of a similar nature, where the government is aggressively communicating the success stories, because these are success stories of the people of South Africa.”
He asked ministers to file reports urgently “on the work that has been done by the departments or the department they led for the past 30 years”.
Ntuli expressed frustration that the government’s main April 27 Freedom Day event marking the 30th anniversary of the first democratic elections had been scheduled to take place in Pretoria rather than KwaZuluNatal, where the need to win over voters was greatest.
“If there was a seamless integration between what we’re doing in elections and the government, we would have influenced the government not to have the Freedom Day celebration this coming Saturday in Pretoria. We understand it is late now, and it may not be easy to change it.’’
According to several recent surveys, Jacob Zuma’s MK Party is making deep inroads into ANC support in KwaZulu-Natal.
EFF leader Julius Malema told the Sunday Times yesterday that the ANC was used to abusing state resources. The poor poster visibility was because the party no longer had unfettered access to municipal budgets in the big cities. “In the past, the municipalities would issue tenders for municipal announcements and for only 20% of the ads to go to the government, with 80% going to the ANC.”
Malema claimed that companies that won tenders to communicate 30 years of democracy campaigns would be expected to provide services and products like T-shirts directly to the ANC.
“Mayor’s official bank cards and garage cards are being used to fill up ANC campaign bakkies with petrol,” he said.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said: “The plan to abuse government departments to amplify ANC successes and the instruction to have these departments coordinate such is ample evidence to back up the complaint I have already made to the Public Protector about the abuse of state resources for party political purposes.
“It only goes to show how the ANC are manipulating voters again ahead of the May 29 poll,” he said.
In a final push to retain power in KwaZulu-Natal, the ANC will deploy to the province all of its 80 national executive committee (NEC) members, leaders of all its leagues and the tripartite alliance, for seven days.
The decision was made at a special NEC meeting held virtually to finalise strategy for the last 40 days of the campaign ahead of the May 29 elections.
The meeting, parts of which have now been leaked, decided that the importance and vast nature of the province required the entire leadership of the party to descend on the province.
In his briefing to the meeting, the party’s head of elections Mdumiseni Ntuli said this would happen in May to help the provincial leaders intensify the campaign.
“At some point within the next few weeks, especially in the early days of May, all NEC members will be deployed to campaign in KZN for a full seven days,” he told the meeting.
“And the reason why we need to go back to KwaZulu-Natal, the momentum that was created towards the manifesto launch which to some extent has [been] sustained by the PEC, must be intensified. The province is big, the province has got so many people who are registered, we need to go back there and when we go back there for seven days in the same way we are going to do in Gauteng leading to siyanqoba (victory), each NEC member will have to be assigned to a maximum of two VDs [voting districts].”
He said the NECs of all its tripartite alliance partners, including Cosatu, SACP and Sanco, as well as NECs of the women’s league, youth league and veteran’s league would be critical in the next few weeks.
“Comrades by that we would have achieved what the province alone can never manage to achieve. Which is reaching out to the majority of the VDs where the ANC has the biggest support base and engage with the electorate there,” he said.
This, Ntuli told the meeting, would be done two weeks ahead of the party’s Siyanqoba rally at the FNB Stadium on May 25.
Provincial elections organiser Nhlakanipho Ntombela said: “We are refocusing the campaign for the next 40 days. Priority is of course on eThekwini with the highest population, Moses Mabhida Pietermaritzburg, Tolomane Mnyayiza in Port Shepstone, General Gizenga Mpanza in KwaDukuza and Harry Gwala Umzimkhulu areas,” he said.
“Targets are areas with the highest population voting for the ANC, places where people will go out in numbers to vote for the ANC, those numbers are in those five regions. We are on the back foot in areas such as Newcastle, Richards Bay and in such areas we will campaign, but the priority will be the five regions.”
KZN is one of the ANC’s most important provinces as it accounts for the second highest number of registered voters after Gauteng.
The party is working against time to counter what could be its greatest political threat, the emergence of the MK Party led by, former president Jacob Zuma.
Senior leaders from the ANC NEC spent this week in Durban and held a meeting aimed at helping the province refocus the campaign for the remaining 40 days.
The ANC will intensify its efforts in KwaZulu-Natal for the remainder of the campaign period, with a strong focus on five regions likely to improve their chances in the province.
One such area is eThekwini — where President Cyril Ramaphosa spent the weekend on door-to-door campaigning, addressing community meetings, doing walkabouts and taxi ranks in iNanda, KwaXimba, Hammarsdale and Clermont.
Among top service delivery issues in eThekwini are water provision, exacerbated by the metro’s failure to repair infrastructure damaged during the 2021 floods. Ramaphosa says the ANC government has a plan.
The presidential working group on eThekwini, established by Ramaphosa earlier this year, has begun addressing water, electricity and infrastructure challenges, including bridges washed away by the floods.
“We are busy at work,” said Ramaphosa. “As it is now the water issue is being addressed, we are bringing out these big tanks that are going to be installed in a number of places procurement has already happened. We are going to have up to 400 and more tanks that will be installed so that people don’t have to keep following the water tankers,” Ramaphosa said.
He did not identify areas where these tanks would be installed or provide timelines, but emphasised that it would be an interim solution until repairs to the infrastructure washed away by the floods.
“KZN and eThekwini especially is a disaster-prone area and we now need to have a more long-term plan and this is what the presidential working group is going to be looking at, bringing together business, government, unions and community-based organisations so that we have a holistic plan of addressing these problems. No other party has the capability to do so.”
The party is under immense pressure, with opposition parties such as the IFP also strengthening their campaigns and the threat posed by the MK Party growing through Zuma’s popularity in the province.
But Ramaphosa said the ANC was not threatened by the MK Party.
“All other political parties that are emerging are trying to nibble at the edges, that is all they will ever do the ANC has great hegemony here and we will emerge victorious because the people of KZN and indeed the people of South Africa love the ANC. We are going to surprise many who think the ANC is not going to have a clear majority the MK Party will feel what the ANC is all about, even here in KZN. I have no doubt about our strength, our support here is quite strong.”
Ramaphosa told congregants during a church visit that it was “God’s will that the ANC governs after the election. I am still going to be president”.
He assured communities he visited across Durban that in addition to social security programmes, his next administration would create jobs.
Explaining why unemployment rose during his first term, he said: “In the past five years we were fixing things that were broken, in the next term we will create jobs because that is our number one priority from the municipal level many projects will be created because we want to lower the unemployment rate.”
He said his government healthcare system would be better with NHI which he promised to sign into law.
“We want to sign the NHI so that you can access any specialist without paying many political parties are fighting against NHI that is why we say vote ANC,” he added.