ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule gives a press briefing on February 13, 2018 on the outcome of the ANC National Executive Committee, in Johannesburg at the African National Congress Headquarters. Picture: AFP PHOTO
ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule has told journalist Clement Manyathela that President Cyril Ramaphosa can’t take credit for the ANC’s victory in the 2019 elections.
When asked if he agreed with people that Ramaphosa helped the party, his response was: “He is not candidate premier, it’s not about [the] individual, it’s about [the] ANC.”
This contradicts remarks made by ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula on Thursday, who said the ANC would have descended to the 40% mark without Ramaphosa, TimesLive reported.
“If the elections result at Nasrec was not reflective of change – you know, the way it did and the policy we adopted at Nasrec – if we did not actually take that direction, we would have actually sunk as the ANC,” he said.
Without this change, Mbalula said he felt the party would have tanked in the 2019 elections.
“Should we have gone on with that we would have probably dropped to 40%,” he said.
Mbalula accused the DA of having campaigned as if “we are still in the Zuma era”.
READ MORE: ANC bound to split into ‘Magashule and Ramaphosa camps’ – DA
“They went for the president very hard and veering away from their own message, and they took a bad approach for them in this campaign,” he said.
The ANC is headed towards a decisive victory at the time of publication, at which point over 90% of votes had been counted.
The party was sitting on 57.54% nationally and had risen over the 50% mark in Gauteng – the party had dropped below this amount earlier on Friday. In KwaZulu-Natal, the party had 53.85%, and it looks set to secure decisive victories in the Northern Cape (57.54 %), North West (61.87 %), Limpopo (75.67 %), Eastern Cape (68.84 %), Mpumalanga (70.58%) and Free State (61.69 %).
Only in the Western Cape, the DA’s customary stronghold, did the party come second, with 28.68%.
The party seems to have done significantly better than in 2014’s municipal elections, which saw them achieve 53.91 % nationally.
However, the party’s level of support has dropped significantly since the 2016 elections, when they achieved 62.15% nationally.
(Compiled by Daniel Friedman)
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.