ANC has to dig into distant past for bragging points

With the elections around the corner, key political parties and players are beginning to reveal their strategies ahead of what is expected to be the most competitive poll since South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

On Friday it was the turn of President Cyril Ramaphosa to partly reveal his party’s hand as it prepares for a showdown that will either see it move to the opposition benches for the first time in 30 years or be forced to enter a coalition with adversaries.

If Ramaphosa’s media conference, at the end of a mass meeting that rounded off the ANC’s 2019 manifesto review process, is anything to go by, expect a repeat of the election strategy the party adopted in 2014.

Back then, faced with numerous corruption and governance crises and a highly controversial president who seemed to chase some traditional voters away, the ANC resorted to conflating its election campaign with the the country’s celebration of 20 years of freedom and democracy. “Don’t judge us just by the last five years of Jacob Zuma’s rule,” the party seemed to be saying. “When you look at our track record over the past two decades, we have a good story to tell.”

Although on Friday in Alberton Ramaphosa didn’t use the “good story to tell” slogan of 2014, it was apparent that he is banking on the whole of the past 30 years, rather than the last six years of him in office, as his and the ANC’s saving grace next year.

The president — and his party — are on the ropes going into the looming elections, with very little to show for his incumbency. Since taking office in 2018, Ramaphosa has had to deal with a string of crises ranging from the growing corruption plague to the general collapse of service delivery in many municipalities and several provinces. The situation wasn’t made better by the Covid19

pandemic. And then there were the July 2021 riots in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng — themselves a direct result of debilitating faction fighting within the ANC and the government.

While trying to recover from the riots, KwaZulu-Natal was hit by widespread flooding that destroyed crucial infrastructure and further weakened the economy.

It is also on Ramaphosa’s watch that load-shedding has been most severe — leaving citizens in darkness for long periods every day. And things got worse: the municipal water supply in dozens of towns and cities began to fail.

With so many problems, it is no wonder the incumbent finds himself without too many “good stories to tell” about his term and has to resort to history.

In conducting its manifesto review the ANC went back to its support base for their assessment of its performance, and Ramaphosa says the consensus was positive.

“On balance, when you weigh up everything, we find that there has been more breakthroughs, more successes,” he said on Friday. “When we launched the manifesto, we actually said, ‘Yes, there is success in a number of areas and there is work in progress on many more…’

“As we count, we have found that there has been enormous achievement and progress. Even if you don’t look at it from a five-year period, you look at it from a 30year period.”

Ramaphosa cited a recent column by political analyst Steven Friedman: “He was saying those who say that there hasn’t been progress are simply not telling the truth. That is the reality. Has there been weaknesses? Yes, and we admit that. Has there been failures? Yes, we admit to that. But the successes, the progress, far outweigh the areas where there has been weaknesses.”

But for the electorate the question is not whether South Africa is better off than it was 30 years ago; of course it is. The question is whether Ramaphosa and the current leadership have improved on the progress made since

1994 as they had promised they would when he entered office. In many respects, the feeling is that things are now worse than they were, say, 10 years ago.

As he officially kicks off the ANC’s election campaign in Mbombela at the party’s birthday rally on January 8, expect Ramaphosa to talk up the number of free houses the ANC government has built since 1994 and the number connected to the power grid and the water network.

Expect the ANC to also wax lyrical about “no-fee schools”, the schools nutrition programme that feeds millions of kids and the social grant system that serves about 17-million citizens. This is all well and good. But hardly adequate in a country with high unemployment and growing inequality.

Ramaphosa and his government will need to craft a concrete practical solution for today’s problems. It is not enough that homes are connected to the grid, when there is no electricity; or to water reticulation systems, when there is no water. It is also not ideal to have millions of young people queuing for social grants instead of being employed, or even better, running their own businesses.