ANC faces growing discontent ahead of 2024 elections

With the 2024 national elections around the corner and definitely looming over the ANC’s head, I have never heard so many disgruntled voices saying the same thing – “ngeke ngiphinde ngibavotele iANC” (I will never vote for the ANC again).

If you think about it, this Zulu phrase sounds a lot like the famous quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 epoch-making inaugural speech when he said “never, never and never again shall it be…”

Except that this time around it’s the voters expressing their disapproval of the ruling party’s performance in government and vowing “I won’t do it again” to put their Xs anywhere next to the ANC’s name.

The party’s electoral losses in recent by-elections at uMhlathuze in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere; its slaying at crucial metros in Gauteng and Nelson Mandela Bay in 2016; and the potential to get further afflicted in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal next year, leaves no doubt that 2024 looms large to the ANC.

ALSO READ: ‘He tried to kill me’: ANC councillor wields gun at community meeting

While the ANC still has a fair chance to retain power at national level, but with a reduced majority, the two battleground provinces will be a litmus test for its strength.

Luthuli House knows for sure that once they lose Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, as happened with the Western Cape, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to come back. The Western Cape has proven that the length of time doesn’t favour the ANC after it lost.

There has been a good-for-democracy power balance in City of Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane and Nelson Mandela since 2016 and Gauteng since 2019, where nobody knows for sure which party is going to emerge victorious.

This trend is shifting to KwaZulu-Natal.

ALSO READ: SOEs in shambles, the high cost of mismanagement

The uMhlathuzi by-election results passed a clear message that the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) – now assisted by the Democratic Alliance – is on the comeback trail in the province. We could see an IFP premier.

There is one reason – and one reason only. That Luthuli House has approved that former president Jacob Zuma should lead its campaign in KwaZulu-Natal. He is the only man who can stop the rising tsunami of the IFP-DA partnership in that province.

However, the old man will not stop his anti-Ramaphosa rhetoric and is hoping the votes he will be attracting would accrue to himself and boost his waning stature in the province.

If the ANC wins Gauteng, even by a paltry one percent above the halfway mark, that’s huge for them.

ALSO READ: ‘No space for Jews in ANC’: ANCWL member quits over ‘Hamas bias’

This is because, in anticipation of a loss in 2019, ANC firefighter Paul Mashatile engaged Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters with a view to partner in a post-election coalition to prevent the DA-led coalition from taking over.

But when they got that small victory, they ditched EFF like a rotten egg, even an offer of a single executive portfolio was never to come.

Despite this, as the two major parties are yet to pronounce on their plans after the election, they are left with only one choice: to talk to each other to form a coalition, perhaps roping in some of smaller parties worked out of the mainly DA-IFP pact.

An unaided ANC win in Gauteng would be symbolic but the current trend of a thin margin of victory should be unsettling Luthuli House.

ALSO READ: Real SA heroes: Whistle-blowers who gave their lives for justice

The new man at the helm in Gauteng, premier Panyaza Lesufi, would have to do better than one percentage point above the threshold in next elections, otherwise the DA will be breathing heavily over his shoulder.

However, Lesufi has been on an almost decade-long election campaign as then MEC for education, who attended and proactively acted on every crisis at local schools.

But never trust a poor and hungry voter, to whom only a single food parcel from the ANC in his hand would be enough to shut him up and the “ngeke ngiphinde” noise would be gone come 2024.