Deep down, what does the ANC stand for? What is its ultimate goal? What is its idea of the perfect society, the sort of society it would like to bring about in South Africa?
I ask these questions in the wake of the sensational results of the IRR’s poll last week, showing the voting intentions of South Africans now. This followed the sensational results of the election in May 2024, when the ANC’s votes dropped to 40.2% from 57.5% in 2019. But the poll showed something even more important, a final turning of the political tide after 31 years of ANC rule.
Both these results deal hammer-blows to the future of the ANC and therefore to its final, long-term goal. But what is its final, long-term goal?
After the 2024 election, in order to stay in power the ANC had to form a coalition, which was called a “Government of National Unity” (GNU). It chose as its main partner the DA, which had won 21.8% in 2024. It was expected that the ANC and DA would each make compromises and each give in a bit to make the GNU work fruitfully for the good of the nation as a whole. But no.
The ANC has made no compromises at all, has not given in as much as a millimetre. It has barged forward as if it still ruled on its own. It has shown contempt for the DA by forcing through dreadful, harmful laws which it knows the DA entirely opposes, such as on NHI (a plan to plunder the health services and have all hospitals run by the state, which will wreck the health of the masses but further enrich the ANC cadres running our disastrous state hospitals) Other laws include BELA (which wants to end all control of schools by parents and governing bodies and give it to politicians and comrades) and the Expropriation Act (which will end private property ownership in South Africa). Somebody said that the ANC regarded the 2024 election results as a “bump in the road”. After it had dealt with the bump by forming a GNU with the DA, it continued to drive along exactly the same road, as if nothing had happened, as if it still ruled alone. But where is this road heading to?
Real aims
If you study the history of the ANC from about 1977 until now, and if you look at the behaviour of its leaders over this period, it becomes clear what its real aims are: self-enrichment for its elite and a vague but consistent theoretical attachment to Marxist ideology. From the beginning of this period, it was obvious that the ANC elite regarded working-class black people as expendable. They still do.
The ANC of 1912 was a very different party, bearing no resemblance to the modern ANC. The original ANC was formed by black Christian liberals who asked nothing more than that all people, black and white, should have the same rights and should all be treated in the same way. This the ANC of 2025 does not want. It wants those it regards as superior, its own elite, to be treated quite differently from those it regards as inferior, the black working classes.
Today the ANC elite wants to use private health and private transport, while it wants the working-classes to use public health and public transport. Above all, the ANC elite wants to send its children to private or semi-private schools where most of the teachers are white and appointed on merit, while it wants working-class children to go to state schools where most of the teachers are black, appointed by DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).
The fact that BEE benefits only the politically connected elite and harms ordinary black people is not accidental. Nor is it only part of the aim of BEE. It is the entire aim of BEE. When President Ramaphosa said that BEE is here to stay, he meant it. He owes all his massive wealth to BEE, and he knows that he will only retain the support of his most important constituency, the black elite, if he promises them enormous wealth through BEE too.
The ordinary black people who will suffer and even die because of BEE are expendable in the eyes of the ANC. Take the example of contracts to supply medical equipment to a state hospital. Without BEE, the hospital would procure the best equipment at the lowest price, so poor black people using the hospital would get their best chance at good treatment. With BEE, the hospital would have used a BEE contractor with the best political connections, who would procure shoddy equipment at a very high price. He would then pocket a handsome profit and make a big donation to the ANC, while poor black patients would receive bad treatment and some would die. The disgusting liars of the ANC claim that BEE is necessary “to redress the imbalances of the past”. They know that all it does is make them worse.
Only chance of survival
Suppose a two-year-old girl was dying of a rare heart condition. Her only chance of survival would be through an extremely difficult operation requiring the best surgical skills. How would the ANC elite choose such a surgeon? If the little girl happened to be the daughter of the elite, they would simply choose the best surgeon, regardless of whether he or she was white or black – or maybe even choose him because he was white (in the same way that Robert Mugabe would not let black surgeons operate on him).
On the other hand, if the little girl had black working-class parents, the ANC would choose a black BEE surgeon in order to redress the injustices of the past. You couldn’t choose a white surgeon because he/she had benefited from apartheid. You might need to check whether the BEE surgeon had attended the ANC’s political school for producing “cadres vested in the ideological and theoretical understanding of the strategic objectives of our revolution”. Would Karl Marx approve of the way she handled her scalpel? The ANC invites us to believe this evil nonsense, while making it clear that it doesn’t believe a word of it itself.
During “the struggle” from 1977 onwards, it became clear that the ANC was not fighting for freedom but for power, not to end apartheid but to stop anybody else from ending apartheid. It was clear that it wanted all the spoils of the party that took over from the apartheid regime. And by “it” it meant the ANC elite. Ordinary black people, then as now, were expendable.
The ANC staged a reign of terror against black people in the townships, killing them if they belonged to rival black parties, killing them if they were employed in any way by the South African government or just killing them for no reason at all except to make them terrified of the ANC. As apartheid abandoned one wicked law after another and made significant reforms, such as the recognition of black trade unions in 1979 and the repeal of the Pass Laws in 1986, the ANC’s terror increased. It exploded into frenzy when apartheid ended in 1990, and the ANC was unbanned.
Terror from afar
Leading the terror from afar, often in rather comfortable conditions in Europe, was the ANC elite in exile. The ANC president was Oliver Tambo. He oversaw the torture and execution of cadres who displeased him at Camp Quatro in Angola. He didn’t invent “necklacing”, the execution of poor black people by setting fire to a petrol-filled tyre around their necks, but encouraged it. So did Winnie Mandela, very loudly.
Working-class black children who tried to go to school in the townships were likely to be executed on Tambo’s orders. The treatment of his own children was different. He took the funds given to him by Nordic countries and others for the liberation struggle, and used them to pay for the education of his own children at elite private schools in England. Today, the ANC merely condemns children to appallingly bad education at state schools. while sending its own children to elitist private or semi-private schools. This is much better, of course, but illustrates a consistent trend in the ANC’s direction choices: the best for the black elite, the worst for the black working classes.
Throughout this period, the ANC’s ideology was a mixture of African nationalism and communism. The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) sees “the Revolution”, by which is meant the coming to power of a privileged elite, as coming in two stages: first, democracy, which has been achieved, and then full-on socialism (communism). The Expropriation Act, which ends private property rights, is a deliberate and consistent step towards communism. But what are the real aims of the ANC leaders for implementing communism, and how will they know when they have achieved it?
These aims certainly will not be the same as those of Lenin, Stalin or Hitler, all fanatic socialists. Lenin, a man driven by hate, was not interested in wealth and fortune for himself. He lived an austere life. He was only interested in bringing about socialism, which meant total state control and abolition of all private property and the market. He first tried to implement socialism in agriculture, which meant collective farms run by the state.
Backed off
The result was famine, starvation and cannibalism, which threatened his revolution. So he backed off and allowed the New Economic Policy, a temporary measure permitting some private farms and a bit of market trading. (This “bump in the road” has been compared with the ANC’s election loss in 2024 and its subsequent agreeing to go into a GNU with the DA.) Food production immediately increased, and the workers could eat again. But this was counter-revolutionary. When Stalin came to power, he could hold a stronger grip on the people, and implemented full-on socialism, total state collectivisation of all farming – the enslavement of 100 million people. The inevitable famine that followed killed over 10 million people, but Stalin thought it was worth it because it achieved socialism.
Hitler was an even more fanatical socialist with his National Socialism, a combination of German Nationalism and socialism, perhaps not too different from the ANC’s ideology, except that he lived by it and the ANC doesn’t. He lived an austere life, never interested in riches for himself.
The communist leaders who followed these three were quite different in their personal aspirations. All were very interested in riches for themselves, especially the African ones. Our own ANC, SACP, EFF and MK leaders are the same. They spout communism as they load themselves with expensive capitalist goodies, drive Mercs, BMWs and Porsches, send their children to private schools and use private hospitals.
While they prattle about the working-class revolution, they keep as far away from the actual black working classes as they can. Somehow they feel that, however much they embrace capitalism for themselves, they are still “left-wing”, “radical”, “progressive” and “revolutionary” if they chant Marxist slogans, denounce the West, call each other “comrade” and repeat jargon from the white baas in Moscow such as “politbureau”, “cadre” and “commissar”.
Hardly moved
The ANC, EFF and MK have very much the same communist/black nationalist ideology. In the elections from 1994 to 2024, the total share of the vote by these parties combined was 62.7%, 66.4%, 69.7%, 65.9%, 68.5%,68.3% and 64.3% respectively. In other words, it hardly moved over 30 years. But now comes the IRR poll of last week. It asked people how they would vote if there were to be an election on that day. The results were sensational. DA: 30.3%, ANC: 29.7%, MK: 15.5%, EFF: 10%. (The first two come directly from the IRR report, the last two are estimates from its graphs.) This means that the combined votes of the ANC, EFF and MK are now 55.2%, which is 9.1% less than their total in the election of May 2024. This really is a break-through, a turning of the tide. Confirming this was the IRR’s even more important finding that 18% of black people, as opposed to 5% before, would now vote for the DA.
For the first time, the ANC’s twin policies of enriching its elite while chanting communist and liberation slogans have stopped seducing ordinary black people. The GNU has probably played a big role in changing their minds. In the GNU they could hear the DA consistently proposing policies that would address the main black concerns of unemployment, lack of economic growth, high crime and appalling education. They could see DA ministers such as Dean Macpherson and Leon Scheiber making real, practical steps for improvement. At the same time, they saw the ANC pushing on with its failing ideology, with NHI, BELA and Expropriation, which are irrelevant to the real needs of black people. So they’re switching their vote to those who will actually help them, rather than to those who will just help themselves.
The refusal of the DA to accept a budget that allows a 0.5% rise in VAT is very important symbolically. It also shows a heartening independent resolve by the DA, which for too long was a doormat under the ANC in the GNU. The DA says that it wants a budget that will promote economic growth: the only way of reducing unemployment. This made ordinary black people listen. The ANC is squirming. The only way it can save itself now is by abandoning its own idiotic and destructive ideology, and trying to serve all the people rather than just its own elite. This I believe is impossible for it to do – no more possible than it is to persuade a lion to become a vegetarian.
Elite owns everything
I suppose that the closest thing to the ANC’s long-term goal, the sort of society it would like South Africa to become, is North Korea, perhaps the most advanced communist country in history. Here all private property has been abolished, which means that the ruling elite owns everything, and the people own nothing. Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader, lives in fabulous capitalist wealth while the people live in socialist squalor but are terrorised into worshipping him and must constantly praise his revolution. The West is continuously condemned and threatened. This is the ANC’s vision for its ideal South Africa. Thank heaven it will never be realised.
[Image: Andrea De Santis on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend