ANC stressed about Gauteng

The ANC is worried about the possibility of not winning the majority of votes in Gauteng in the coming elections.

The party is also concerned that its standing in the national poll is dropping.

“The polling worries us,” ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu said on Thursday.

“That we are very low in Gauteng worries us greatly.

“We are very concerned‚ there is no way we cannot be concerned‚”

But he was confident that the results from recent polls would galvanise and jostle the party’s faithful to work harder – and might force members to put aside faction fights and focus on winning over voters.

The aim was to win outright and avoid a coalition government in Gauteng‚ as coalition governments had proven difficult elsewhere, he said.

The South African Institute of Race Relations published a poll on Wednesday with various scenarios.

One of its chief findings was that the ANC would get 41.6% of the vote in Gauteng‚ down 12 percentage points from the 53.6% it secured in the provincial ballot in 2014.

According to the poll‚ the ANC stood to get 54.7% nationally‚ down 1.3 percentage points down from results of a previous poll the institute conducted in December.

Mthembu said once the party’s campaign was in full force‚ polls might reflect a different picture.

It was still in a better position than the 54% it received in the 2016 local government elections.

He said part of the plan was to explain that the ANC was dealing earnestly with matters of concern to them‚ including corruption.

Improvement in the polls would also depend on the ANC going to each house and admitting to the wrongs it may have committed.