Grassroots citizens may find it harder to get ANC’s ear

Has a window just closed for grassroots citizens who want the government to listen to them — and those who want them to be heard?

Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president seems to have changed the partypolitical climate. While there is no hard information on what voters think of the change in ANC leader, its prospects of winning the 2019 election seem to have taken a huge leap.

The EFF is clearly worried – and has reacted in a way that is likely to make its fears come true. The DA now has to explain away its own factional battles rather than gaining mileage out of the ANC’s.

If Julius Malema is to be believed, the DA may be about to lose the mayoralty of a major municipality after the EFF withdraws its support.

The biggest opposition parties have spent so much time and effort on President Jacob Zuma that they both fear, with good reason, that their time in the sun may be over now that the Zuma era is over — even if he stays in the Presidency for months.

Talk of the ANC’s battle to retain its majority has turned into expectation that it will win comfortably next time.

Whether this is good for the country depends on where you stand. But it does seem to make life harder for citizens who want to be heard and do not enjoy the same access to the government as the well-off and the well-connected.

Common sense, backed up by research, tells us that grassroots citizens are much better able to get the government to listen when competition between political parties increases.

Politicians listen to business, labour or professional groups because they need them — they only need people at the grassroots when they need their votes. This is why, as this column has pointed out, the period since the last local government elections offered a great opportunity for activism by and on behalf of people at the bottom of the pile.

The opportunity has been wasted. Social justice groups were far more interested in campaigning against Zuma than in making use of it. Local activists did not or could not use the fact that major cities are now run by coalitions or minority governments to press for change.

Does the ANC’s probable revival at the polls under Ramaphosa mean the moment has passed? Not necessarily.

The sigh of relief now that Zuma’s reign as ANC president has ended and his hold over the government seems to be slipping away, will not last forever. Voters who stayed at home rather than vote for Zuma’s ANC are now inclined to give Ramaphosa a chance — if an election were held tomorrow, they would probably vote for the governing party.

But the election is only likely in about 18 months. If the ANC does not by then show that it is fixing the problems that caused voters to stay away, they will not return to it.

One of those problems is that many ANC voters feel that its leadership cares a great deal about themselves and not much about the people who elect them. Unless the ANC shows it has heard them, they may not support it.

So the governing party still needs to show voters that it cares about their concerns.

The two biggest opposition parties have an even greater need to do that. And so voters – grassroots voters in particular – still hold an important advantage: politicians must still take them seriously if they want to govern.

This may not matter: if activists did not take advantage of the opening before Ramaphosa’s election, why expect them to do it now? But, for anyone who wants to deepen democracy rather than joining the fashionable chorus, the door which opened in August 2016 has not closed.