DA AND EFF EATING INTO ANC SUPPORT POPCRU
THE ANC faces the possibility of getting less than 60% of overall votes in the coming local government elections.
This could help explain why the governing party has reportedly pumped more than R1-billion into its election campaign.
One of Cosatu’s largest affiliates the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said that since 2004, the organisation had won by less than three percent in local elections compared with national elections that followed soon thereafter.
This, according to the union, was because some voters who support the ANC during national elections tended to vote for other parties or local or civic organisations in the municipal polls that follow.
The union’s general secretary Nathi Theledi noted this in a political report delivered at the organisation’s central executive committee meeting between July 15 to 17.
Theledi further stated that the EFF and DA were eating into the ANC’s support base.
“All these groupings cannot be underestimated. They have exploited the narrative of our revolution and our mistakes to win the hearts and minds of the masses,” Theledi said.
“… the possibility of falling below 60% is greater than at any time before.
“This is not just a matter of projecting trends but also a consequence of the new dynamics that bring uncertainties [more] than before.
“Both the DA and the EFF have been eating into the constituencies of the ANC.”
In 2011, the ANC received 62.9% of the national vote, which was a drop from 65% in 2009.
In the last general election in 2014, the ANC recorded serious drops in the Nelson Mandela Bay
“ANC supporters feel conflicted
metro in the Eastern Cape, Johannesburg and Tshwane.
The three metros will be hotly contested in the elections next week.
The ANC, EFF and the DA have dispatched their senior leaders to campaign in these areas and other urban areas.
The urban areas now account for a much bigger slice of the votes than rural areas.
Theledi said weaker mobilisation in ANC strongholds made the party’s prospects slim.
Theledi said although 92% of ANC supporters said they would vote for the party, only 73% of them approved of the government’s performance, while only 54% were happy with municipalities’ performance.
“ANC supporters feel conflicted and defensive. Their loyalty and love for the ANC has to do with increasing pain and worries that their organisation is being used for the interest of self-serving [individuals] ... that do not consult them as much as it should.
“They also feel that the movement is stuck in the past,” Theledi added.