ANC deserves another chance - Ntuli

By ZIMASA MATIWANE

● South Africans continue to vote for the ANC not because of reading about progress and development in the news, but because it is their lived reality.

This was the overall takeaway of the party from its nationwide door-to-door campaigns ahead of the May 29 election.

That’s according to the ANC head of elections, Mdumiseni Ntuli, who in a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Times this week said the strategy of the opposition was to diminish such progress over the past 30 years.

With less than two months before the election in which the ANC faces possibly its worst electoral performance, Ntuli believed despite some glaring failures during the three decades of ANC governance, it is still the only party that can lead SA.

“As much as people are unhappy with issues such as water, electricity, unemployment, my own experience during door-todoor is our opponents are not presenting a credible alternative — their emphasis has been the failure of the ANC,” said Ntuli.

“Their biggest problem is they are talking about the failure of the ANC for 30 years, which is not true. The more you engage with people, the more it becomes clear to them that, yes, there have been failures but it’s not 30 years of failure.”

Ntuli said the ANC message going into this election is a genuine clarion call to unite for a prosperous SA — to preserve significant progress and success while dealing with problems and setbacks.

“We have walked together for the past 30 years and there were moments we can be proud of, and some we cannot be proud of, but together in this journey we have acquired the experience that nobody else has. Now let us do more together using that experience and knowledge and the understanding of what we need to do to take the country to the next level,” he said.

However, many may not be feeling part of that journey with poverty; unemployment; lack of water, electricity and housing; and social ills such as crime.

While Ntuli concedes that not everyone has enjoyed the fruits of freedom, he maintained that the ANC can still practically demonstrate an aspirational life with progress under the ANC government.

“Even if it is yet to reach you, but you can point to people who have benefited in the democratic state — our understanding of the South African reality is that you can hardly find a local municipality where no ward has not changed from what they were before the ANC became a governing party — our position demonstrates progress.”

SA has soaring unemployment, affecting graduates who cannot get jobs. This is a paradoxical situation, according to Ntuli, in which ANC policies have worked but left some halfway towards the journey to realisation of a better life.

“The fact that even going to university was a result of the government intervening in their plight, these are people who may have never seen a lecture hall if it wasn’t for ANC government policies,” he said.

“They are frustrated because they have no imagination of any other situation in the country different to what it is today, where you can study and be supported by the government because they were not there when the government was not supporting students.”

Ntuli highlighted the SA Revenue Service as a beacon of hope that showed the administration was committed to institutional excellence, saying: “We managed to recover and made mistakes with the SOEs, but look at Sars — it’s turning around, they are collecting billions more than what was expected. That is a sign of an institution that is turning around.

“Sars was heavily corrupt, it was undercollecting but a turnaround strategy was implemented and unlike many others this is one institution in which the improvement is showing within the current term of office. Sars got worse for a few years under the same government [but now] the same government has turned it around.”

But for the ANC to continue governing it must win votes, and Ntuli said while the ANC may have taken long to fix some problems and the public is unhappy with a lot, “from campaigns I am not getting a sense that the majority of South Africans are prepared to walk away from the ANC”.

Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal were two critical provinces the ANC had to retain if it was to succeed in rolling out its social transformation agenda, he said.

“We get worried when we see certain things not going well in those provinces because at this stage we can’t handle negative impacts on our potential to succeed,” said Ntuli.

The ANC campaign focused on activities directed at interacting with the middle class as it was alienated in the past, with Ntuli saying the days of labelling that group “clever blacks” were over.

The ANC, he said, has a renewed attentiveness in the Western Cape with elected provincial structures and reconnection with the Muslim community.

“After a long time we will be going to elections with all our structures in good standing, unlike in the 2019/2021 elections. Having structures energises the campaign.

“The issue of Palestine has definitely alienated the DA from a significant portion of the Muslim community in the Western Cape, and that on its own encourages us to do more

— what we are dealing with now is what we need to do to leverage that.”

And while it’s common practice that provincial ANC chairs were also premiers, Ntuli said a renewed ANC in its decisions to deploy should emphasise calibre over conference results.

“It’s a wrong notion that the chair of the ANC must be premier — it’s something that came with JZ and Mantashe’s leadership. It’s a problem introduced by that post-Polokwane leadership which made it inherent that as a chair of a province you are premier.

“Under Mbeki and Madiba that was not the case because the ANC leadership understood that Mdumiseni might be elected as chair, but he does not have what it takes to be a premier.”

Ntuli believed the ANC deserves another chance to govern.

“In all democracies there are mistakes in the course of the work. In fact, if you don’t want to make mistakes, do nothing.

“Our view is that we have been in office for only 30 years and for democracies that may not be a long time — apartheid was in this country for 46 years. Notwithstanding the mistakes we committed in the past few years, South Africa should be rated as one of [the] successful democracies.”

... our understanding of the South African reality is that you can hardly find a local municipality where no ward has not changed ... Mdumiseni Ntuli

ANC head of elections