ANALYSIS
Crushed by the present, the ANC will rely on the past to help it win the future
With the ANC seemingly under more electoral pressure than ever before, it would only be rational to expect fresh new messaging ahead of the all-important elections, now just a few months away. But the party’s January 8th Statement this weekend, and the speech by President Cyril Ramaphosa, offered no evidence of a party that is able to conjure a fresh start, and instead will rely on its track record over the last 30 years. This may turn out to be a mistake. A big, fat, mistake.
While the main January 8th speech was delivered by President Cyril Ramaphosa as leader of the ANC, the official text of the statement was published by the party’s national executive committee (NEC). The President’s speech is essentially a summary of that statement.
Considering the importance of the event, the fact that in previous times it could dominate the political agenda, and that the ANC was given acres of TV and radio airtime, this time it has probably underused the opportunity.
There appears to be almost nothing new in the 2024 statement, despite the fact it is obvious to almost everyone that the ANC needs to change something. And that the party still very much wants to win again.
Almost immediately, right at the start of the document, is the first indication that the ANC is going to rely on its track record over the last 30 years, rather than its capacity to change the lives of people in the future.
Its first heading is around “Celebrating 30 Years of Freedom”, and it starts with the adoption of “a transformative Constitution”.
This is probably the biggest indication yet that the ANC’s election strategy is likely to be based on its track record over the longer term than in the recent past. It may also show the ANC is refusing to make promises that it can improve the lives of people over the shorter term. Or that it believes that as opposition parties are going to criticise its track record it has a duty to defend it.
There is much of this reminder of the long-term record, how the ANC has provided access to water and electricity to many people who did not have them before.
ANC pamphlets during the Voter Registration at Ridgecrest Family Church on 18 November 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images/Luba Lesolle)
Wooing the youth
Crucially, it also says that “Over the last 30 years, South Africa’s young people have benefitted from our transformative programmes, a vital part of our work to build a nation of skilled, informed and resilient young people”. It goes on to say that young people have had a big impact on our society on issues such as governance, LGBT issues and have “repeatedly pushed us to rethink our politics and ways of doing things”.
This appears to be an important recognition of the importance of the votes of younger people in this election.
While there is undoubtedly a large group of younger people who have benefitted from the ANC’s policies, there are many millions who appear to be almost giving up hope. Most of them believe they have virtually no chance of ever gaining a formal job, and a sustainable income.
Read more in Daily Maverick: SA youth ‘not apathetic’ but irked by poor delivery, coalitions, independent candidates — report
In a way, for the ANC to win younger voters may be almost impossible. This is a group of people who have no memory of Apartheid as an oppressive system, even though they are living in an economic system still defined by Apartheid.
Also, there is stiff competition for the younger vote from the EFF. Its message of revolutionary change may resonate more strongly with these voters than the message of the ANC.
The ANC is also clearly aware that load shedding could be one of the most important issues ahead of the polls (although there are some indications the set of crises in our water system could soon overshadow it). That said, it makes no new promises, instead saying that “the overall trend is towards less severe load shedding and better management and communication of outages”.
For a governing party to almost celebrate the “better management” of outages may tell voters all they need to know. The ANC is responsible for load shedding, the failure of government to resolve it, and the fact that the just transition is now unmanageable.
The ANC also says that its branches must “campaign to ensure communities pay for services used and support programmes to introduce pay-as-you-go meters and disconnect illegal electricity and water connections”.
This is a much softer message from what has been said in the past.
In 2022, while announcing our short-lived National State of Disaster over electricity Ramaphosa said, “We must pay for services and prevent illegal connections”.
Ex Deputy President David Mabuza (right) at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)
In 2019, the person then in charge of the Electricity War Room, then Deputy President David Mabuza said, “It’s a good culture that we must teach ourselves: pay for services that you have consumed”.
Perhaps, just perhaps, in an election year, paying for services is not as important as it is in normal times?
It is also now clear that the party sees the introduction of the National Health Insurance system as a vote-winner.
Ramaphosa made it clear in his speech, as does the NEC in its written statement, that the NHI will happen.
Read more in Daily Maverick: After the Bell: Why the passing of the NHI Bill demonstrates the obliviousness and ignorance of SA’s political class
Considering that those who oppose it are people who benefit from private healthcare, while those who support it rely on government healthcare, there are obviously votes here.
However, even if the party does implement it formally this year, almost nothing will change for many years, because of the complexity of the system, and the sheer amount of change that still needs to happen (never mind the series of legal challenges that are likely to come).
Coalitions crunch
One of the more intriguing comments from the ANC over the weekend was the way it views coalitions. Obviously, as the party currently in power, it has the most to fear from coalition governments.
The ANC says that the “frustrating experience of dysfunctional coalition governments has shown that they don’t work for the people but for the political deal-makers intent on advancing their own personal interests.” It also says that service delivery suffers during these times, while “Replicating this bitter experience of chaos, instability and dysfunctionality at national and provincial levels will be a disaster that our country cannot afford”.
Many may agree with all of this. But completely absent is any recognition of the ANC’s role in creating these situations.
It is the ANC that has voted, with the EFF, to elect people like Al Jama-ah’s Kabelo Gwamanda into power in Joburg or the Northern Alliance’s Gary van Niekerk as Mayor in Nelson Mandela Bay. Without the ANC’s votes in these cases, these incompetent people would not be in office.
Kabelo Gwamanda during a community engagement at the Civic Centre on 15 November 2023 in Lenasia, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images/Papi Morake)
Surely the party has to also take responsibility for these “dysfunctional coalition governments”? If it does not, that indicates it may still be prepared to take part in these agreements in the future. Or even worse — it is living in a fantasy world.
The ANC NEC also appears to be sharply distant from reality with another simple statement.
The NEC says that, “There will be no compromise on the fundamental matters of organisational discipline and integrity”.
And yet the party is still unable to deal with their own people who were clearly implicated in State Capture wrong-doing by the Zondo Commission.
Despite the NEC’s instruction that people who are implicated must themselves report to the Integrity Committee, a high number of them have refused to do so (in June last year the current head of the Integrity Committee, Frank Chikane said that number was as high as 97).
ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang. (Photo: Gallo Images/Rapport/Deon Raath)
Despite a promise to ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang last year that action will be taken on this matter, there is no indication of any change at all. It seems almost inevitable now that some people implicated in State Capture will now be allowed to represent the ANC in Parliament and provincial legislatures after the elections (unless the Elections Commission chaired by former President Kgalema Motlanthe acts to prevent that from happening).
The ANC still has to release its election manifesto, and it is in that document that final promises to voters will be made. But, based on the evidence so far, it appears the party may be unable to craft new policies and programmes to win votes.
This may be an admission the party understands it cannot convince voters it can improve their lives in the next five years. And this may be a mistake. Many voters will want to see their lives improve. They want their future to be better than their past. And so far, the ANC appears to be unable to convince voters it is capable of achieving that. DM
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The time has come for change. The ANC has failed monumentally even allowing for past history. It has squandered the country’s resources and produced a communist puppet state.
Now is the dawn of a potential new democracy with new ideas and the energy and confidence of unbrainwashed youth.
Supposedly too, the ANC is again well-funded…. one thinks Russia, Iran etc albeit via spurious financial channels and with ablind eye by the authorities
URL blockages again this morning to comment
The new “wunde”rkids” do not want to create a perseption in the minds of the electorate that they are friends of of will work with the “enemy
The ANC/EFF is bargaining on the perception it sustaines that everything is/will be /was better where they are in charge. They manage to do this by deification of their outdated ideology , victimhood mentality and destruction or undermining of everything and everybody contrary to theirs. And their brainwashed electorate will continue to vote for them. Where a party is better governing , services are delivered and safe to consume and delivered, the brainwashing and sabotage continues of creating perceptions of being the enemy of the people in the electorates mind. New parties who have no record of any service delivery but tries to create the belief that they are the “wunderkids”, the magic wand, because they are the “other” yet they are part of the great divide between ideology and practical success. SA is doomed
I hope the youth who vote for the EFF understand that the country will crash if the EFF gains more power in SA. They must be made the understand basic economics and market sentiment. There is zero sentiment for the EFF by business…. and the other way around too.
That’s the scary part – they do NOT understand
Inconvenient truths will obviously be avoided. Opposition parties should simply illuminate the massive failures and corruption as the Zondo report revealed. Simple statements of widely known facts, Eskom, SAA, Transnet collapses, should be front and centre.
Ask the public the question:
If you do the same thing (vote for the ANC) how do you except a different result?)
Just wonder how the opposition parties will do that?
Also where the EFF has failed the country with their corruption and installation of an incompetent mayor. That must surely ring loud and clear with Gauteng voters?
The anc is incapable of improving people’s lives. They are, however, eminently capable of making them much, much worse.
Pigs will turn on pigs only once the trough is empty. Human nature dictates that individual interest come before the collective (which means politicians lie to help themselves). This has been demonstrated time and again by the ANC cactus. It is only those who seriously threaten the workings of the patronage system that get pushed out.
Well said
Very well said, Mr Grootes, thank you. The Statement clearly indicates that the ANC is completely incapable of addressing the critical issues facing the country, including the electricity and water crises and infrarructure crisis generally, crime and security, education, health care (they are pushing through NHI that will be an absolute disaster), and unemployment. They have created the crises with corruption and maladministraton, and they cannot come up with any innovative and effective solutions. Ministers are saying and doing different things on electricity, and there has been paralysis throughout this current administration.
A very good point that you make also about their role in rendering the coalitions in many instances, especially Joburg, onto circuses. It can only rely on populist promises like the NHI, and by measuring progress going back 30 years, rather than the current term of government, which is what the measurement should be. Things have been seriously deteriorating during this period.
Lovely title – very clever, and oh so true.
The DA et al just need to say one thing, and mean it.
We will continue ALL social grant payments as is….
AND we will create jobs so that you can get off social grants into a better life.
If we have more jobs and a growing economy we can just about sustain SASSA.
The alternative, stopping grants, will send the country into a civil war / unrest.
Its kind of a difficult position we all find ourselves in. On the one hand, we have the rapacious cadres of the ANC, quite literally slavering at the mouth to get at the feeding trough again. Immediately behind them, you have the EFF, rudely pushing and shoving to try and get their go. Both blatantly lie to the electorate, and both get away with it. In the case of the ANC, they have gone so far as to admit to lying, yet no consequence accrues to them. On the other side, you have the well meaning, competent DA – weighted down by the ANC and EFF legacy of race baiting, desperately trying to fend of disaster alongside several new groups all with the same goal. But the guys they all need to reach – the black, unemployed youth, are not interested in well meaning competance. They want an easy out of the hell the ANC forged for them, which makes them easy meat for the nutters in the EFF. The potential for ugly disaster is deeply worrying.
Unbelievably pathetic speech from Cyril. Proudly announcing 20 million people now receive grants (which are less than a single bottle of Johnny Walker Blue whisky that most of the ANC cadres consume) but no mention that they would far prefer to have jobs !!!!!
What other government would be proud of creating a welfare state? Only the ANC government with their outdated communist ideology and what they are aiming for is to keep the poor uneducated and completely dependent on the state. That way they will hopefully (through ignornace) keep voting for the ANC. Rinse and repeat – how many times has this happened around the world in corrupt “communist” regimes?
The ANC should not be talking about what they have done over the past 30. Yes, they did a lot of good from 1994 to 2008. That is reflected by the fact that employment increased from 10 million to 14 million over that 14 year period. But from 2008, when Zuma came to power, the country has headed downhill. That is reflected by the fact that, over that 16 year period, employment has remained static at 14 million despite a massive population growth. It is completely disingenuous of the current ANC to rely on the work done under Mandela and Mbeki. They should be asked: what have you done for this country since 2008?
Voters are not as rational as we would like to believe (Brexit, voting for ANC in previous elections despite rampant corruption). Its not really relevant what they state or how they portray themselves – its a farce.
Ultimately the election will be decided in the trenches – e.g. vote DA and the white people will take away your grant. Political commentators effectively are out of depth – their analysis does not matter.
The article illustrates just how utterly democracy has been wasted on us.
“There is much of this reminder of the long-term record, how the ANC has provided access to water and electricity to many people who did not have them before.” This is UNTRUE! Yes, the ANC has provided access to water and electricity to many people who did not have them before BUT, there is no electricity or water to access on a regular basis. As is typical, they have reduced everybody to the lowest common denominator. like the schooling. Lower the percentage required for a pass and we can all be happy! What a bunch of clowns!
ZANU-PF and the ANC are one and the same. Grind the poorest of the poor into abject poverty and bribe them forever thereafter with paltry food parcels, Tee Shirts and if you’re lucky, a social grant. SA might not have reached Zimbabwe’s levels of gangsterism and poverty but we’re not close behind.
Ramaphosa proudly tells the bussed-in voting steeple that now 18 million people receive social grants against only 2,5m in 1999 – a seven-fold increase in people dependent on meagre handouts for their survival. Since when is this a measure of success? Why no jobs for these people? Easy : legacy of apartheid/ white monopoly capital/ western hegemony/ reactionary forces, etc.
Meanwhile 55000 “civil servants” get paid over R1m p.a. and the ANC’s alliance partner Cosatu pushes for more. Shameful, deeply shameful. This is not going to end well.
Indeed, shameful and foolish. Blind leading the blind.
Here’s a thought that a failing political party never had previously. Find a scapegoat. Do you know who really stole your land? Who really who stole your money? Who was always at the centre of apartheid? Who always does these things no matter where they go? The “you-know-who’s”. Not the ANC – we are coming to save you. We are going to the Hague. Then we will block sports captains and professionals. Then we will lead business boycotts. Then we will bring legal cases. Then antizionism will slide effortlessly into antisemitism (Choose which country you are loyal to. Why are you sending your children to Israel?). It’s an old playbook. Same story, different characters. Oh, and BTW (spoiler alert) – same ending.
Other countries take pride in reducing the need for social grants. This government takes pride in having increased the need for social grants. Extraordinary.
At the risk of being viewed as a pessimist, I do not envy the party or coalition the task of taking control of the chaos that the ANC have created. Realistically, how do you fix the mess that the ANC have created? The extra chaos that would result in the ANC losing an election or control of this country would be devastating beyond belief. We only have to remember the KZN uprising to get a small peek of what would happen. The ANC would make sure that the country became ungovernable. In my humble opinion, I don’t believe that South Africa is fixable in the foreseeable future.