About two hours after ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe at Luthuli had said that the party appreciated the “overwhelming support” of voters that clinched the majority of council seats countrywide, ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu took a similar line in Parliament.

“When you hear the narrative in the country you feel as if the ANC lost the elections, when in fact we won the elections,” he said, adding, “the ANC remains the people’s choice, though with a reduced majority.” And the ANC chief whip, like the secretary-general, pointed out that of the 4,392 wards in the country, the ANC had won 3,435.

But as the topic was “Deepening democracy despite setbacks for the ANC”, Mthembu moved on to argue that the results were not an endorsement of opposition politics – and would be overturned in the next elections. “The losses we have suffered are not because any other party is better than the ANC. The losses and setbacks suffered in these elections are self-inflicted.”

Amid the platitudes to humbleness and promises of a grassroots listening campaign, there was no indication of a nuanced analysis of why the ANC lost its outright control in four of the seven metros it used to hold.

Instead, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba maintained that the ANC was on track with its national democratic revolution.

“For us, elections are about creating further beachheads to carry forward our revolutions,” he said. “A great and difficult struggle lies ahead to stave off the counter-revolutionary upsurge in our country whose liberation from the yoke of colonial bondage we fought so hard to achieve.”

The irony of at once arguing the ANC’s “righteousness”, while acknowledging supporters stayed at home because they “felt the ANC did not earn their votes this time”, seemed to have been lost on Gigaba – and the ANC in Parliament.

The ANC benches were sparsely populated and those ANC MPs in the House looked grim. There was little enthusiasm for the conclusion by Deputy Transport Minister Sindi Chikunga – “The ANC lives! The ANC leads! Amandla!” – who had focused on recounting her party’s liberation struggle credentials.

Deputy Co-operative Governance Minister Andries Nel stayed on safer ground with the government’s back-to-basics programme and praising the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) for its work. But he also invoked the threat of provincial and national intervention should councils not deliver under the mantle of good governance.

Between them, the four ANC speakers had more than half of the speaking time but there was little impact.

That belonged to Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, who sharply highlighted the political contradiction of castigating the EFF for strategically supporting the DA while the ANC had merged with the successor to the apartheid National Party (NP). The 2001 political deal, which gave rise to floor-crossing, saw the New NP leave the DA and in the process hand (temporary) control to the ANC of Cape Town and other municipalities the next year and the Western Cape in 2004.

“Sitting in these benches are people who come from the NP. Who are you to educate us?” said Malema. The EFF-DA co-operation was an urgent intervention in the national interest. “The country is collapsing… This is an emergency. We had to pause and rescue this country first.”

Repeating statements made last week when the EFF announced it would co-operate on an issue-to-issue basis with the DA and other political parties to keep out the ANC, Malema added: “We don’t vote for crooks. We don’t vote for kleptocracy.”

DA leader Mmusi Maimane put it somewhat differently. “(Voters) showed us that when things go wrong, we have the capacity to choose a different path… To the ANC, the lesson of this election is very clear: never take voters for granted. The voters are watching us…”

For smaller parties, like the United Democratic Movement (UDM), African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and Freedom Front Plus, the municipal poll showed every vote counted, and that they mattered.

And UDM chief whip Nqabayomi Kwankwa also took issue with ANC claims of selling out. “Sold out to what? Remember none of us can want to partner with you when you are corrupt,” he said. “ The local government election results have rejected President Jacob Zuma, a man who continues to live like a proliferate in a sea of poverty. (Voters) have rejected the ANC. The message is clear. It says to you: people resent your arrogance and the sense of exaggerated importance.”

Despite the opposition confidence in Parliament, a tough road in co-operation politics lies ahead. The IFP on Tuesday announced the expulsion of two councillors at eDumbe municipality for voting with the ANC in defiance of the broad opposition co-operation agreement struck last week. It’s not the first controversy: in Rustenburg, the ANC retained the mayor and speaker positions after councillors, understood to come from a community-based party, broke ranks in the opposition pact.

However, keeping the ANC out means South Africa’s executive capital Tshwane, its economic heartland of Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay, the Eastern Cape’s industrial hub, now have DA mayors. And as Tuesday’s parliamentary debate unfolded the DA also clinched its first mayorship in Limpopo in the Modimolle municipality.

It was all simply too good for DA chief whip John Steenhuisen, who gleefully noted that Zuma was not in the House, only his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa.

“Ronald McDonald is in the House… He had to swap his happy meal for humble pie,” said Steenhuisen in reference to the fast food chain franchise ownership by Ramaphosa’s business empire.

“They (ANC) are going to carry on with the arrogance. They are going to carry on with the aloofness… The ANC cannot self-correct,” said Steenhuisen, touting the opposition municipal poll performance as a sign of what’s to come in the 2019 national and provincial elections. “As the Carpenters famously said: ‘We’ve only just begun’.” DM

Photo: Supporters arrive to listen to the leader of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, President Jacob Zuma, addressing the party’s final pre-election rally in Johannesburg, South Africa, 31 July 2016. EPA/CORNELL TUKIRI