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Last week, the ANC’s National Executive Committee met to evaluate the results of the 29 May elections. Or, more accurately, to discuss why it performed so badly. At the centre of this was a report by Joel Netshitenzhe, the head of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.
The report is probably the most in-depth public document tackling the subject so far. It examines not just the ANC’s performance, but also those of the other bigger parties, including the DA, the EFF and MK, and presumably set the stage for the debate that followed.
It should be remembered that this question — Why did the ANC do so badly? — is likely to be debated for many years to come; even 10 years from now there will be strong opinions about it.
That said, Netshitenzhe’s analysis provides some salient insights.
He agrees with several others who have pointed to the role that identity and ethnicity played in the elections.
While it seems uncontroversial to suggest that in democracies around the world many voters support the candidate most like them, such sentiment can cause intense reactions. However, there is much evidence showing that this is true.
In this case, as Netshitenzhe writes, the fact that MK received so much support from KwaZulu-Natal is important.
It may well become more important in the years to come. It has often been lamented on this webpage that our democracy, like others, is suffering from the rise and perhaps domination of identity politics.
One insight from the report is that where the ANC did well there was a low voter turnout, and where the ANC did badly there was a high turnout.
As Netshitenzhe notes, “The province where the ANC performed well (Limpopo at 73.3 percent, Eastern Cape at 62.8 percent and North West at 57.73 percent) registered the lowest turnouts. This had the effect of eroding its aggregate national figures. The more intensely contested provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, Gauteng and Western Cape had higher turnouts on either side of 60 percent.”
Interestingly, these provinces are where there were more parties and more campaigning. This suggests that many did not vote in places where the ANC was less threatened.
The real danger to the ANC here is that it suggests that if there are options other than the ANC, people will choose them — and should more parties emerge in the future, then many voters will find those new choices tempting.
To put it another way, the reason so many people did not vote in Limpopo, Eastern Cape and North West is that there was no serious contender to vote for.
Netshitenzhe also builds on the work of the analyst Dawie Scholtz, who has suggested there was a very significant voter differential between townships and suburban areas.
Only 55% of people in predominantly black areas voted, while 71% of people in predominantly white areas did.
This obviously helped the DA while working against the ANC and the EFF.
As has been pointed out before, this is a reminder of how often elections are about turnout and why the real objective of a campaign these days is not so much about changing minds, but convincing people to go to the ballot box.
Zille’s prediction
While the ANC was discussing this report and other subjects relating to its electoral performance, the chair of the DA’s Federal Council, Helen Zille, said the ANC would continue to lose support. She went further, saying that within 10 or so years the DA could be the biggest party in Parliament.
Zille said this was because the ANC does not know what it stands for, while the DA and the EFF both do. She believed the real contest over the next 15 years would be between those who support the Constitution and those who do not. (Interestingly, she does not seem to see MK as a longer-term threat, a view shared by many others).
There is much evidence supporting Zille’s pronouncement that the die is cast for the ANC.
As valuable as Netshitenzhe’s report may be, it deals only with the symptoms of the ANC’s electoral decline. It is a simple fact that for most South Africans, the quality of life has deteriorated over many years (and especially the last five years), largely because of the way the ANC has governed.
It was the ANC that allowed infrastructure to break down, ensured load shedding happened and lasted for so long, and under whose watch violent crime spiked.
Through all of this, the party has clearly failed to learn any lessons.
While some party leaders over the weekend did claim that “renewal” was existential for the party, there is nothing that indicates it will change its ways.
ANC leaders still use the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” to defend party members against whom serious and credible claims have been made.
There has been no plausible explanation of why Zizi Kodwa was allowed to represent the party as an MP after resigning as a minister when formally charged with corruption.
Even in Gauteng, where the party won just 36% of the vote, the ANC is happy to deploy Panyaza Lesufi as premier, even though he oversaw the spending of R431-million on the unnecessary sanitisation of schools.
Perhaps the closest the ANC has come in recent times to acknowledging that the behaviour of its members is responsible for the party’s loss of support was the famous letter by its leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in 2020. In that document, he said the party was “Accused Number One” when it came to corruption.
This suggested the party was about to change.
Unfortunately, it has echoes of 2007, when then ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe told the journalist Carol Paton “The rot is across the board” in the ANC. Nothing improved after that.
Zille’s claim that the ANC does not know what it stands for means that for many voters it has come to stand only for the enablement of corruption.
And, as she points out, with the departure of Ramaphosa from the party’s leadership in 2027, it seems unlikely that the party will change course.
All of this means that the only choice for the ANC is to act firmly against corruption and improve governance.
However, while governance may improve (because of the coalition), the party still lacks the will to tackle corruption. DM
