The ANC is dancing to the beat of the EFF
LESEGO Semenya tweeted on Sunday that if one had put a R400 bet on Leicester City winning the English Premiership at the start of the league, they would win a possible R2,076,601 when Leicester City takes the English Premiership. Thanks to a combination of consistent form on their part and other teams playing badly, the most unlikely team won the league.
In much the same way, sudden political ascendancy needs two diametrically opposed forces working in tandem. The first is the talent and or timing of the prospective party and the second is the opponent’s consistent and even predictable blunder. It wasn’t so long ago that the African National Congress (ANC) was using its rallies as a show of force against the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Following the poor ANC manifesto turnout in the Nelson Mandela metro and the EFF’s impressive show at Orlando Stadium, it has been amusing to watch the ANC chastise the media for focusing on stadium numbers.
With each passing day President Jacob Zuma becomes a more effective weapon against the ANC. Reports are that the party has been forced to cancel rallies to avoid publicly embarrassing its president. The more the ANC insists on not dancing to the opposition’s tune, the more it creates the ideal set of circumstances for the sudden political ascendancy of the EFF.
Two weeks ago, I argued that the opposition was not presenting a compelling alternative to the ANC and that many voters were opting to not vote in response to the ANC’s failures, rather than vote for an alternative. But it is also the prerogative of a columnist to explore a different argument, which although not entirely contradictory, leads to different conclusions.
In the 1997 UK general elections, the Labour Party caused a major upset that saw Tony Blair become prime minister. The stunning win was not simply a result of a rebranding exercise and a shift in policy towards more centrist politics. The Tories themselves had scored far too many own goals that helped propel their opponents into power. The combination of an unhappy electorate, thanks to the costly events of Black Wednesday and other scandals, a campaign that failed to inspire a fed-up electorate, and the unfortunate timing of the elections, all contributed to the Tories’ defeat.
In his 2010 memoir, The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, former UK minister Peter Mandelson describes the heart of the Tories’ defeat. “For voters, feelings prevail over beliefs. People may be torn between their heads and their hearts, but ultimately it is their gut feeling that is decisive: they vote for the candidate that elicits the right feelings, not necessarily the ones who present the right arguments.”
A combination of smugness and condescension is frustrating the electorate. The ANC appears out of touch with everyday frustrations. People are not looking ahead, they can only deal with this arrogance.
Although some leaders of the EFF played some part in creating the Zuma tsunami, the EFF is merely riding an ANC-created wave. The EFF’s proposition works because it satisfies the need for instant gratification, a way to vent against the ANC. The Democratic Alliance, on the other hand, is missing the wave because it has neither a compelling alternative, nor is it responding to immediate impulses.
The opposition does not have to worry about governing, the ANC does. The opposition already knows that it needs to do very little to distract the ANC with defending its president, keeping it from important work. It is the opposition that needs Zuma, not the ANC. Yet, by holding on to the opposition’s biggest trump card, the ANC strips itself of all agency to tackle the concerns of the electorate and by dancing to the opposition’s tune, it is now right on beat.