Governance failures to blame for ANC membership drop

A top political analyst says the ANC governance failures are to blame for the party’s declining members because people see government mistakes as mistakes of the ANC.

Reacting to the low membership of the governing party and its continuous poor electoral performance over the years, including the recent local government polls, Professor Piet Croucamp from the North West University’s Business School said people, including ANC members, were disgruntled by corruption, joblessness and crime, and all that was visited on the ANC as a party.

ANC membership drops by half

The ANC membership dropped from 1.2 million in 2012 to just about 600 000 currently, which was a sharp decline.

Many members saw the crisis as an uncontrollable downward spiral of the once-mass movement. They also saw the ANC decline as another factor that contributed to its poor voter performance since 2009 election.

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In the organisational report given by deputy president David Mabuza on behalf of the secretary-general’s office, the party blamed several shortcomings: the fact that many members were not active in party branches, membership buying, an unreliable and slow membership card system and the decline in quality and discipline of members, among others.

But Croucamp believed the largest factor which contributed to the situation was the implementation of a strict membership system by the ANC which prevented ghost members and corruption in the system of the party.

Lack of political activism

The lack of political activism in society was another major factor blamed for the decline.

“ANC people are less involved in the party,” he said.

“Many people live below the breadline, crime has increased and the state is absent – you call the police and there is no response.”

Mabuza acknowledged the continuous decline in ANC electoral performance which went down by 4.65% between 2014 and 2019, while it went down from over 66% under Thabo Mbeki.

It continued to slump markedly throughout the Jacob Zuma years and obtained 57% in the 2019 general election under Ramaphosa.

“The trend that should occupy this 55th national conference is the fact that the ANC election fortunes continued to decline,” Mabuza said.

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Croucamp said: “People have lost confidence in what their vote means, they have lost confidence in democracy.

“There is poverty and few people have access to the economy and jobs, and they feel helpless and neglected.

“The ANC is the state, if the state does not provide it means the ANC does not provide.”