Annus horribilis

THIS is the year the ANC will want to forget in a hurry. It is their annus horribilis – a time when they have realised that their party, a brand the world has long come to associate inextricably with South Africa, is not invincible after all.

It was a year when the custodians of Nelson Mandela’s memory lost the city regarded as the party’s traditional and spiritual home, a place where many of its leaders were born and are laid to rest.

The 2016 municipal elections will be seen as the turning point where the 104-yearold movement’s Achilles heel was finally exposed. Brimming with self-confidence, the ANC couldn’t dream of losing so much influence and power.

So self-assured were its leaders that its deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, boasted on the eve of the elections that his party would retain all the towns and cities under its control. But, alas, not only did it lose the Nelson Mandela Bay metro – named after its iconic leader – and Tshwane, the administrative capital and seat of the Union Buildings, it also failed to win Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal.

President Zuma couldn’t win an election in his own backyard, where his pastoral and deferential neighbours turfed out the country’s number one citizen.

These are the elections where South Africa told the ANC – thanks, but no thanks.

The coup de grace was that when Zuma delivered his well-rehearsed speech at the IEC results centre in Pretoria, four female activists brought memories of his May 2006 rape trial into the living rooms of a worldwide audience.

During a month dedicated to honouring women, it is ironic that it’s some of the most senior ANC women cabinet ministers who objected stridently to the activists highlighting the plight of South African women.

So where to now for the ANC? At this stage, it looks as if there will be no getting around going, cap-in-hand, to their nemesis, the EFF, to stay in power in some of the big metros. These include the country’s financial capital, Johannesburg, and Ekurhuleni, the manufacturing powerhouse once deemed an ANC fortress. Here, as in many other centres, except eThekwini, the party saw its support plunge – a once unshakeable edifice rattled.

Nkandla, the Nhlanhla Nene dismissal saga, the Guptas, the 783 corruption charges that Zuma has been ducking – all these were hurdles lying silently in wait for the ANC as the country went to voting stations on August 3.

In Gauteng, where the ANC got just 53.5% of the vote in the 2014 national poll, the odds were doubly stacked: e-tolls. The ANC was obstinate and unrepentant that the vastly unpopular e-tolls must stay. Thus the damage was wrought.

The party must return to the drawing board. They must put their finger on the pulse of the mood of voters. The 2019 national poll is hardly 18 months away. The ANC have no other choice if they don’t want to see their support continue to slip and the party being relegated to a rural, provincial outfit, shunned by voters in urban centres.