ANALYSIS
DA’s march on ANC’s Luthuli House was the starting gun for its 2024 election campaign
The DA’s march to the heart of the ANC, Luthuli House, over the issue of rolling blackouts may well be the start of its campaign for next year’s general election, as the energy crisis seems set to be the defining issue of the 2024 campaigns aimed at ending 30 years of ANC dominance.
Come next year’s general election, the ANC is likely to say it has improved the lives of millions of people and deserves another chance at power.
Still, that one-third of the country which has political power and exercises it may now be frustrated with the electricity crisis beyond the point of no return. That rolling blackouts are still going to be with us when voters cast their ballots is a fact that ANC leaders appear to have finally realised.
On Wednesday, members of the DA marched towards the ANC’s headquarters, Luthuli House, saying it was there the real decisions that ruined Eskom were made. DA leader John Steenhuisen said it was the ANC that had broken the entity and was responsible for the problems that we now face as a nation. He said this would be part of a campaign of “rolling mass action”, perhaps a nod to tactics used by the anti-apartheid movement.
There is strong evidence to bolster the DA’s claim. As is well-documented, it was the ANC which was in power at all times during this crisis, and it was ANC members and leaders who made the decisions that broke Eskom.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Twelve years of load shedding – written, starring & directed by the ANC”
And it was the ANC which benefited directly from deals such as Hitachi contracts through Chancellor House that led to catastrophic boiler problems at the Medupi and Kusile power stations.
It is the ANC government that appears unable, even unwilling, to address the sabotage in Mpumalanga, criminal acts committed within Eskom and the historic levels of corruption.
The ANC is well aware of this, so instead of simply refuting the DA’s claim, the party’s spokesperson, Pule Mabe, has said that it was the ANC itself that pushed for the Zondo Commission, thus shining a light on the State Capture which occurred at Eskom. (It is also the ANC chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, who is taking the Zondo report on judicial review. — Ed)
Mabe focused on the DA’s decision to march on Luthuli House, rather than trying to defend the ANC’s track record on electricity. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise on Sunday evening to ask Eskom to “put in suspense” its power price hike shows how important this issue is to the ANC.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Ramaphosa’s load shedding populism – a cheap, short-term political move that will hurt South Africa”
For the DA, the real power of this issue may not be just to shine a light on its claim that the ANC is incompetent. It can use this to illuminate many different issues, including cadre deployment, corruption and the problems the ANC has had with basic stuff like forming a coherent energy policy.
At the same time, there seems to be competition among our politicians to be seen as foremost in trying to stop the Nersa-approved 18% increase.
Ramaphosa says he is asking Eskom’s board to suspend the increase, the DA has lodged a court application, and the UDM and Mmusi Maimane were joined by other groups in lodging a separate legal challenge.
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The real value is getting votes
For the DA, this may be about ensuring it is not seen as silent on this issue. In the longer run, ahead of the elections, the real value for the main opposition party is getting votes.
Its share of the vote has fallen in recent years (certainly in the 2019 national elections and the 2021 local elections, while it disputes claims that it has lost votes in recent by-elections).
One of the problems the DA may have is getting what it believes is its constituency to simply go out and vote. If it can transform the election into an opportunity to “vote against load shedding”, this picture may change.
Its strategists are likely to believe that rolling blackouts can play the role Jacob Zuma once did in helping the DA.
This may also explain its very public efforts to ameliorate rolling blackouts in the places where it governs.
One of the first acts of Mpho Phalatse, when she became the DA’s mayor of Joburg, was to hold an indaba about electricity and to start plans for that metro to purchase power from independent power producers.
On Tuesday, the DA mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, announced that National Treasury was now allowing the city to purchase power from people with rooftop solar installations.
If Cape Town is able to alleviate load shedding while the rest of the country suffers in the dark, it will be a very powerful advert for the DA.
The DA may have another aim here.
From time to time, commentators have asked whether the ANC would give up power if it lost a democratic election. The DA may benefit if the ANC is seen to react extremely to any kind of provocation. That could resonate with a particular constituency in our society.
However, the ANC itself has a few cards left to play.
First, any march on its headquarters can allow its leaders to call on its members to defend it. They can claim that the entire ANC is now under siege from the DA. Some of those leaders may also want to introduce race to this fight, which could have an impact. (The DA would argue that most of the protesters wearing DA regalia were, in fact, black.)
Second, the ruling party can appeal to what may be described as “wavering ANC voters” to defend the revolution — by which it would mean, the changes introduced since the end of apartheid.
Already, the KwaZulu-Natal ANC provincial secretary, Bheki Mtolo, has said that people in Umzimkhulu in that province do not complain to him about rolling blackouts, because during apartheid they did not have electricity at all. He is unlikely to be the only ANC figure to make this point.
In the meantime, the ANC Youth League says it’s planning to march to Eskom over rolling blackouts. This is probably another example of the ANC’s well-used tactic of trying to harness the outrage of society at its own decisions, corruption and incompetence.
This would mean that the response by politicians to the energy crisis now involves at least the following: the DA’s march to Luthuli House, a call by the President to suspend an increase agreed to by the regulator, a call by the KZN ANC for its councils to lodge their own legal case against the increase, a planned march on Eskom by the ANC Youth League, a separate legal application by the DA, and another application by Holomisa and other groups.
It is clear that politicians are very comfortable arguing about who is to blame. But they do not appear to be focusing on finding solutions.
Which may mean that no matter who wins next year’s elections, very few of our politicians will provide solutions to solve our problems. DM
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On the DA.
I believe the DA have sound policies about almost everything. Some are consistent with ANC policy on certain matters.
I would like to see the DA become a policy pusher. Tell us what you have in the situations you are attacking in government. What will YOU DO about race inequality? What will you do to fix Escom? How will you provide energy in the short, medium and long terms? What will you do to resuscitate the railways? What will you do to fix education? What about Health? And water? And a multitude of others.
These are core issues that matter to the electorate, and which the ANC is failing to correct. Any sound pronunciations of policies that will address these issues for the benefit of all in the country would have resonance there.
It is great to attack the government where it is going wrong, but lets hear how you will fix it.
Agreed. I think the DA does have policies and solutions but their communication of them is very poor.
Try looking at the DA website and seeing the policies there. The difficulty for the DA is getting its message across to the public when many in the media, for no doubt with their own good reasons, are antagonistic to the DA.
This article by Stephen Grootes is a breath of fresh air and hopefully the beginning of more even handed political articles from journalists.
I am soooo tired of the attacks on the DA. The media has a lot to answer for. Instead of encouraging the official opposition it appears the media is constantly finding fault with the DA giving the party no credit for anything.
Have a look at what the DA has done in the Western Cape. Not perfect, but a great deal better than the rest of the RSA!
If not them, then who Trevor?
I think what Trevor is trying to say is that the DA needs to put it out there and shout it to the general populous from the rooftops. Reading off websites is ok but boring – so nobody does it. And the masses one appeals to are mostly poor and if they have a phone, they are going to waste their precious data on surfing websites just before election time.
You are probably right. How does one “shout it to the general populous from the rooftops”?? It is done via media coverage. In SA the media have lock-jaw when it comes to the DA. They would rather yell about Zille’s innocuous tweet, or some deliberately misinterpreted photo that landed an unlucky teacher in a racial hell hole. They always give coverage to the “huge” number of Black members who get booted out of the DA. This is South Africa, most people are Black! So what is the problem? If the media is democratic they have a duty to “put it out there” for every party. Can you (anybody) tell you what the policies are of any party in SA? No! People gripe about the DA, but get real, it is the media that is lacking.
In my mind the DA is the only alternative. I have been a supporter from the early years of the PFP party, born from the Progs, and the father of the DA. My concern is that the public image of the DA is taking a knock. To stay in front it needs to look at its strategy for reaching the people. I feel my earlier comment was exactly about this – freshening up its image. People see and hear more than they read these days. Therefore put policies on air in the many situations available to do so.
Think! Check what the DA post!! Do you READ?
What I would like to post would be deleted as illegal!
Meanwhile the brain drain continues. So we continue with cadre deployment . Scary!
“It is clear that politicians are very comfortable arguing about who is to blame. But they do not appear to be focusing on finding solutions.” But Stephen, further up your article you write – “One of the first acts of Mpho Phalatse, when she became the DA’s mayor of Joburg, was to hold an indaba about electricity and to start plans for that metro to purchase power from independent power producers. On Tuesday, the DA mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, announced that National Treasury was now allowing the city to purchase power from people with rooftop solar installations.”
Wouldn’t you call that focusing on finding solutions?
There is no doubt that on local level the DA is looking for solutions. But at national level the leaders don’t. For instance, the problem with the instability at local level with the metro’s lies with the obsession of the DA national leadership to want to govern these municipalities from national level, which has clearly been found to be unconstitutional. So the DA also has certain outdated ideological obsessions that it puts before the interest of the voters. No wonder that the drive for a constituency-based electoral system had to come from COPE instead; the DA pays lip service to it but they also, just like the ANC, don’t want to relinguish national control. And Allison Weston, I am going to keep criticize the DA as long as they have all these childish attitudes, because currently at national level they ARE part of the problem. However, I hope someone nominates Mpho Phalatse as leader of the DA, because she is one person that does not blame others, and she DOES take responsibility. If she happens to become the DA leader one day, maybe then some of these bad attitudes WILL change.
I remember Robert Mugabe’s campaign for President during the war years with Zapo and Zanu PF fighting for the position of power. His slogan “If you want to stop the fighting then vote ZANU PF”. It worked! Perhaps the slogan around which the DA can run their campaign should be “ Want Electricity back? Vote DA”
Want electricity back? Vote DA!
I don’t understand this discussion at all. How can an opposition party be judged by the fact that it might not be able to solve the current government’s problems if it were in power? A change of government always carries the risk that things will not improve. But who seriously thinks SA would be worse off if the DA took over? It seems to me that many South Africans are still clinging to the hope that the ANC can rebuild itself from within and pull itself and the country out of the quagmire. Anyone who thinks this way does not really have confidence in a democratic multi-party system. This mindset seems to be widespread in South African mainstream journalism as well. It should be the foremost task of freelance and independent journalists to research objectively and to work out the different goals and solutions of the parties for the readers.