Tomorrow, the ANC’s most senior leaders will hold a marathon meeting to discuss what went so terribly wrong for the party at the recent elections. They will also try to find a way forward for the party.
On 29 May, ANC support dropped by 17 percentage points, and with only a little over 40 percent of the vote, the party lost its majority.
The ANC meeting will begin soon after the President has addressed Parliament on the plans of the government of national unity (GNU). If the GNU plans are to have credibility, there will have to be a degree of consistency with ANC policies and what emerges from the six-day meeting.
The party’s Secretary General, Fikile Mbalula, said the National Executive Committee (NEC) will spend the first three days trying to understand the election “calamity.” Following this, the NEC will spend three days trying to come up with a way forward for the party. The NEC is the party’s highest organ, with the authority to lead the party between its National Conferences.
Mbalula told Natasha Marrian of News24 that the party would be “unrecognisable” in a year’s time as a result of a “renewal process”.
The single most significant factor behind the ANC’s calamity on 29 May was the sudden rise of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the party backed by former president Jacob Zuma. In KwaZulu-Natal, MK polled nearly 45 percent in the province, and nationally it received just short of 14.6 percent of the vote. In KwaZulu-Natal, MK helped push the ANC percentage of the vote down by more than 38 percentage points from the 2019 election. For a party that was only launched toward the end of last year, that is a phenomenal showing.
MK benefited from a surge in Zulu nationalist support and the enormous charisma of Zuma. This was probably combined with feelings among many MK voters that times were not as good as they had been under Zuma. MK might also have benefited from ANC office holders in the province switching to MK.
There is a question as to whether the loss of ANC support to MK is a permanent one. Might MK, like Congress of the People (COPE), be a one-election surge party?
Zuma, the figurehead of MK, is now 82 and will be 87 at the time of the next national elections. There have to be questions as to what will hold the party together once he is no longer in politics. Having grown so rapidly, the party appears to be in a bit of a mess.
There must be voices in the ANC asking how the party can reclaim MK voters.
If many of the MK supporters return to the ANC fold, it is not impossible, with a bit of additional support elsewhere in the country, that the party could achieve a majority and return to power. For that to happen, it would probably have to try to reach out to those who are eligible to vote, but do not come to the polls. This would be a difficult task, but not entirely impossible.
The ANC will remain the largest party for some time. That helps give it an almost countrywide reach and means there is a credible scenario in which the ANC returns to power on its own, if MK implodes. But other parties will also be out to get those votes from an MK implosion.
What could force change in the ANC is that it is now without a majority, and therefore faces far more intense political competition from other parties. Until 29 May, the ANC had a huge, albeit waning majority, which meant it didn’t really have to worry about competition to the extent that it now has to.
For the ANC to be “unrecognizable” and fit for an election in a year’s time, the party will have to do what it has failed to do over many years. The ANC has long promised “renewal”, and the statement by Mbalula that the party will be “unrecognizable” in a year’s time is simply not credible. Deeply vested ideological and economic interests in the party have meant that it has lacked agility.
Then there’s the matter of the application of the rule that ANC cadres should voluntarily step aside if they are charged with wrongdoing. This is much spoken about, but it seems is rarely implemented. A number of the current crop of ANC MPs were recently sworn in as MPs, despite evidence of wrongdoing.
Even in the face of more intense competition, the ANC is likely to have problems in making changes. Will the ANC be able to change its outmoded comrade ideology that calls for a large “developmental state”, hanging on to public enterprises, and expropriation without compensation?
There is a market for these ideas, but it is probably not nearly as large as the ANC imagines. And anyway, the EFF and MK might have cornered much of this market. The ANC has to update its ideology to become “unrecognizable”, but it probably can’t do this, given the weight of its history.
Dropping chunks of its ideology about the state of nirvana brought about by a “National Democratic Revolution” will jar the comrades, but will indicate a far more pragmatic party.
In the past, there was some truth to the frequently made observation that, “the ANC talks left, but walks right.”
In recent years it has displayed greater racial nationalism through its upholding of codes and legislation to bring about faster empowerment. And the passage of the bill permitting expropriation without compensation is a demonstration that the ANC does not consistently walk right.
In its latest renewal exercise, the party should take in the lesson that emerged from the President’s signing of the bill to create a National Health Insurance scheme just weeks before the election. Tracking polls showed that support for the ANC slumped just after he signed the bill.
Any attempt at renewal of the ANC is also not helped by the nature of the tripartite alliance made up of the party, the communist party and unions. There are also empowerment interests: people who have benefited or feel they could be given deals. Alliance with these interests restricts the ANC’s ability to deal with disasters at state enterprises and introduce reform policies.
With Ramaphosa in his last term, the race to succeed him as President of the ANC has already begun. That could mean that all attempts at renewal might become a political football in the succession race.
The Deputy President, Paul Mashatile, is reputedly close to the EFF Commander in Chief, Julius Malema. That casts uncertainty over whether the ANC would go into another coalition government with its present partners, which include the Democratic Alliance.
To ensure confidence in the present party configuration of the GNU, a renewed ANC will have to indicate that it favours a broad centre-type coalition.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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