Where is the opposition while SA crumbles?

They miss Lucas Mangope in the North West province.

The man’s name pops up frequently in conversation, online, on radio and in other media.

The more the ANC fails to deliver on electricity, roads, safety and security, infrastructure and other areas of governance, the more the name of the late ex-Bophuthatswana Bantustan leader is invoked with reverence.

This is a huge opportunity for the political opposition if their leaders are listening.

Right now, no-one seems to be filling the leadership void created by the ANC’s misgovernance.

I would posit that if a charismatic, traditional Christian values, right-leaning capitalist figure like Herman Mashaba and his ActionSA concentrated on the province, they could wrestle it from the ANC in 2024.

Over the past three weeks of engagements with figures in the province, I have witnessed how, whenever politics is discussed, Mangope’s name crops up.

It says something that a man whose name was reviled in the 1990s is now spoken of with nostalgia and even longing; it tells you how much the ANC has failed in 28 years in power.

ANC support in the North West has fallen for four elections. It fell from 80.7% in 2004 to 72.9% in 2009, then went from 67.4% in 2014 to 61.8% in 2019.

At the weekend, I raised the 2024 election among friends and relatives while in Hammanskraal, formerly the northernmost end of the apartheid-created Bophuthatswana homeland (which existed from 1977-1994), and in Mahikeng, near its southern end.

Because most recent polls have concentrated on urban areas, particularly Gauteng, I’ve made it a point to ask rural folks how they would vote in 2024.

The answers, though anecdotal, are eye-opening. “Look, just look,” replied one auntie outside Mahikeng.

“Under Mangope there were technical colleges and schools for the youth, now kids roam the streets smoking nyaope. “There is no electricity. “Every policeman you see takes a bribe.”

The complaints are numerous: infrastructure is failing, the economy has collapsed, there are no jobs and there are no opportunities for young people.

“Crime? There was no crime here under Mangope,” another woman said.

“Now there are more crooks walking the streets than there are inside Rooigrond [the local prison].”

This is a common theme, even though the Bantustan system itself was a colossal crime scene.

Yet it would be a mistake to think these disgruntled people are all reactionary, Bantustan-supporting layabouts.

One of the most fervent proponents of this Mangope nostalgia is a friend.

He was among more than 1,000 youth activists arrested by Mangope’s police while at a meeting in Winterveldt in March 1986.

The cops opened fire on the crowd, killed 11 and injured more than 200.

My friend and others were arrested, charged with attending an illegal gathering and public violence, and were threatened with high treason charges.

They were held in detention in Ga-Rankuwa and tortured for weeks.

Last Friday he told me: “The ANC has failed us.

“Mandela said ‘a better life for all’, but now it’s a better life for the ANC’s leaders.

“We are nothing.”

We were with a high-ranking ANC local leader with whom he had at some point shared a detention cell in the 1980s.

He told his comrade: “I am not voting ANC in 2024.

“If there was a Mangope party I would give my vote to them.”

He pointed at the road, which at some point in the past 10 years was tarred, but now it is just gravel.

“Look at the ANC’s roads. “Yet look at the quality of Mangope’s roads. They were built in the 1980s and they are still here, still smooth, very few potholes.”

We had picked up my friend at a tavern.

A group of men were gambling in front of the place.

Youths high on nyaope were lazing about, begging for money.

It is no wonder that, last week, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime announced SA was on its way to being a mafia state.

It said SA’s murder rate had risen 38% since 2010, kidnappings for ransom had quadrupled, and there was a R187bn annual impact from infrastructure theft such as the looting of copper-power cables.

In the view of many of the people I spoke to in the province, the government is absent in their struggles with these challenges.

Where is the opposition when so many are crying out for leadership?