Till Jesus comes? Probably not

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, has lamented his party’s “lacklustre” showing in the municipal elections. At a media briefing this week, he was pained to reveal some of the party’s preliminary findings of the elections post-mortem.

The perceived racist utterances by Julius Malema, the outspoken ANC Youth League president whose popularity has nonetheless swelled recently, were to blame for the ANC’s failure to garner support from the minority groups in particular.

I find Mantashe’s lamentation strange. For a party that has won 62 percent of the votes in a fiercely contested poll, to weep and wail seems so illogical.

Mantashe, and indeed the ANC, should be rejecting any commiseration and accept only congratulations for an election in which they won convincingly – albeit with a 4 percent reduced majority and in spite of uninspiring preparations.

The ANC leadership should be smiling from ear to ear as they sit around the table at Luthuli House, taking stock of a hard-won victory despite an incoherent campaign. A drop of 4 percent – from 66 in the 2006 elections to 62 now – is certainly not a train smash.

Quick qualitative and quantitative research would show that the ANC’s performance is in fact in line with international trends of the electorate gradually abandoning self-assured ruling parties.

But for the ANC, a party that has won every election since the dawn of our democracy in 1994 and returned with a handsome majority at every election, Zuma & Co should rejoice rather than grieve over the generous support expressed by voters.

In politics, as in life, no party can be everything to everybody.

The ANC is the oldest liberation movement in Africa, but it cannot flaunt its struggle credentials and expect that the party’s rich history will be a permanent magnet drawing voters “until Jesus comes”. Even at its peak the ANC, while led by the phenomenally popular Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, former Rivonia trialists and Robben islanders and prominent returned exiles, the ANC could not muster a 100 percent election victory.

This was in spite of the vast majority of South Africans, including all the minority groups, hailing Mandela and the ANC’s humane policy of reconciliation in a country scarred by decades of racial strife.

Now, if Mandela himself, the man virtually regarded as our living political saint, could not succeed in rallying the entire electorate, why would the lesser mortals in today’s ANC believe they could secure every voter’s faith?

Over the last 17 years the ANC has had to navigate its way out of a myriad new challenges, an exercise that cost the party support but also won them new friends.

The cause for the ANC’s decreased support at the polls is not hard to fathom.

The plurality of voices throughout the entire ANC family, which often resulted in conflicting messages and public spats between prominent leaders of the tripartite alliance, were the first symptoms of the battle for space in the highest echelons of the party.

There is surely nothing wrong with vociferous internal discourse in accordance with the party’s constitution.

However, when it spills into the open, the sympathetic voter can only feel confused and bewildered, disappointed as well as disaffected.

Mantashe is correct in his view that the Malema factor did alienate the minority groups. Yet in the same vein it is my considered opinion that the Malema factor attracted many young voters, particularly those at tertiary level, to the ANC.

One need only look at Malema’s poise and charm – and the warmth with which he is received – whenever he sets foot on campuses to address students.

Part of the 4 percent the ANC lost can evidently be traced to several party activists who registered as independents in protest against unpopular candidates who were forced on the communities.

Cope, which won enough votes to form opposition coalitions in municipalities, also cost the ANC.

This is the group that was largely ANC until the formation of the breakaway party before the 2009 national election.

Over and above, the DA’s sophisticated and well-oiled machinery will remain a thorn in the side of the ruling party for a long time.

Young black voters are not deeply sentimental to the history of the ANC.

Therefore, the struggle talk alone will never be sufficient to sway the way they vote.

Other black DA voters do so out of their experience of a glaring lack of service delivery by the party they once held in high esteem and in whom they placed so much hope, only to be let down.

As the years go by and our democracy matures, the DA will continue to successfully shed the tag of a white people’s party.

Under Helen Zille, the DA managed to swallow Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats. The result was a convincing victory in the Western Cape and Midvaal, a town in the soft underbelly of the ruling party.

History teaches us that no political party can govern forever.

It is usually a matter of time before the cookie crumbles. Yet the ANC has done exceedingly well to still reign supreme across the length and breadth of our country’s political landscape.

However, as more party members fight over positions in the public service as well as access to resources, so will aggrieved captains continue to jump ship and take along their crew.

This is not unique to the ANC, Mr Mantashe. It is the consequences of the progression of time.

Only a little bit of hard work and humility can prolong the ANC’s stay in power.

l Makoe is the founder and editor-in-chief of Royal News Services