Campaigns need financial backing

LET us be realistic. It is necessary for any campaigns, political or otherwise, to have financial reserves to ensure their success.

This is the time where political hopefuls of various kinds will speak about many dos and against many don’ts of political campaigning as the ruling ANC is gearing up for another party presidential nomination.

I find this process quite exhilarating in many ways, but it also has the unintended and consequential divisions and factions that tend to outlive this constitutionally imperative process of electing the new leadership.

We have officially entered the season when candidates who wish to ascend to the highest office within the ranks of the ANC also hope for the highest office in the land. Names have been thrown all over the media spaces with pronouncements from various partners of the tripartite alliance asserting their views and emotions are starting to run high.

The ANC has around 5 000 branches all across South Africa and it cannot be possible just to wait for all the branches to say who they want to succeed President Jacob Zuma without some nudging and persuasions of various kinds. This process is really about lobbying and being lobbied, and allowing comrades to “find one another on a particular view going forward”, as it is always phrased by the insiders.

For any successful presidential candidate to emerge in the ANC national congress a year from now, the view must have had the majority support from the branch delegates. But for this to happen, the balance of forces must have been established at provincial and regional levels as well as in the branches themselves.

This is why a campaign is necessary. The ANC does not have an electoral college like the DA where leaders are appointed.

Leaders are elected and with all elections (within the ANC or outside), lobbying is paramount. To lobby effectively, one needs to reach all corners of ANC’s geographic presence, the voting delegates in particular.

To do that, the campaigns need to be funded. The group with the highest morals, who won’t go the extra mile to reach these voters, will be a loser.

The group that can take its candidate’s name and intentions once they emerge victoriously will be the obvious winner. The problem is that the ancient Scripture teaches us that “When the wicked rise, men hide themselves; but when they perish, the righteous increase”.

All of this will need a sufficient financial injection to take place because the ANC is not a regional or provincial organisation. The ANC is a 105-year-old organisation that spreads throughout the whole of South Africa.

So I say, let the group that is most convinced that it has the best candidate to take South Africa forward go out through the length and breadth of the ANC to convince the masses that it has the best candidate to be the president of South Africa in 2019. But most importantly, it should also amass resources to wage a good warfare for what it believes for South Africa.