ANC faces toughest poll test of the democratic era

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In a few hours, South Africans will decide which party they want to represent them in the country’s 278 municipalities. 

The ANC, Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters have each sent out their heavy hitters to crisscross the country in an election campaign royal rumble. 

These local government elections will also be contested by a record 325 political parties; meanwhile, the number of independent candidates has increased to a record 900. 

This poll is seen as one of the most important since democracy — the threat to an ANC-led government has become more tangible as voter tolerance of corruption and poor service delivery runs low.

This year’s local government elections were not without hurdles. In September, the constitutional court dismissed an application by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to postpone the vote until February 2022.

In its application, the IEC cited the lockdown regulations and the possible threat of a fourth wave of the Covid-19 virus, after adopting a report in July by retired deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke. It concluded that, if the elections were held on 27 October, they would not be free and fair. 

Moseneke was commissioned by the IEC to investigate whether the elections would be free and fair if held in October, given the possible effect of the pandemic on campaigning and voting. He concluded they would not, and recommended the four-month postponement.

The report cited epidemiologists, who warned that the actual number of Covid-19 infections was probably three times higher than the official statistics, and that, although the infection rate would be relatively low in October, holding the election could result in a resurgence that the country would be unable to manage.

The ANC was the biggest benefactor of the constitutional court’s ruling, because it had failed to register hundreds of its councillor candidates with the IEC, which would have meant the governing party would lose control of at least 30 municipalities. 

Although the ANC had dodged a bullet, the governing party was also wrestling with internal battles as members in branches across the country decried the party’s candidate selection process, which they claimed had been manipulated. 

Hundreds of ANC members filed disputes over the selection of candidates and spates of violence flared up in parts of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Limpopo. At least 10 people were killed in what is termed political violence. 

At the party’s manifesto launch in Tshwane, President Cyril Ramaphosa assured party members that disputes would be dealt with after the elections, encouraging volunteers and members to rather focus on the campaign. 

Begging bowl in hand, the ANC’s top leaders have traversed the country making promises to do better and apologising for the party’s poor service delivery record. 

Ramaphosa has pledged that the ANC would subject all representatives and officials who fail to behave appropriately in fulfilling their roles to disciplinary action or other corrective measures. 

When necessary, he added, people will be removed from their positions. 

“Where there is evidence that a crime has been committed, the matter will be referred to law enforcement. We pledge to act speedily against officials conducting business with municipalities and against those implicated in maladministration,” Ramaphosa said.  

“Within our own ranks, the ANC will continue to apply the ‘step-aside’ rule for any members that have been charged with corruption or other serious crimes. Any ANC member facing allegations of wrongdoing must appear before the ANC integrity commission to explain themselves.”

The ANC was hammered in the 2016 municipal elections when the DA took municipalities in the metros of Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg.

Although the DA was considered the rising star in 2016, it steadily lost its popularity because of its race policies and factional battles, which led to the watershed resignation of its leader, Mmusi Maimane. 

Its coalition with the smaller parties also disintegrated in Nelson Mandela Bay and the City of Johannesburg. The EFF was a bedfellow of the DA, but lost its appetite for the blue party, leading to the ousting of Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip and the ANC taking over in Johannesburg. 

Economic Freedom Fighters manifesto launch at Gandhi Square in Johannesburg. (Photo by Laird Forbes/Gallo Images via Getty Images)

The DA managed to regain Nelson Mandela Bay and clung to power in Tshwane as the ANC’s provincial government attempted to muscle in by placing Tshwane under administration. The courts found in favour of the DA. 

While the DA chronicled its service delivery records armed with the slogan “We get things done”, the party’s campaign was caught with its pants down when its KwaZulu-Natal chairperson, Dean Macpherson, put up posters that were viewed to be political point-scoring and leveraging on the July riots in which many people were killed in Phoenix. 

The outrage over the posters, which juxtaposed the “The ANC called you racists” and “The DA calls you heroes”, forced the DA’s federal executive committee to call an urgent meeting and Macpherson was ordered to apologise. 

Digital expert Carmen Murray, the founder of modern marketing business Boo-Yah, said the Phoenix posters harmed the official opposition party significantly. At 33.8%, the DA had the highest negativity sentiment in the local government elections. 

“What is concerning for the DA is that they are sitting with the lowest neutrality of 59%. That is telling me that people who have been keeping quiet have now all of sudden gone, ‘no, I’m sorry I’m not in agreement’,” Murray said. “Their positivity was high before the posters, at over 11.5%, but now it’s sitting at 6.5%. The DA is becoming very unpopular.”

Making his last plea to voters on Saturday, DA leader John Steenhuisen said the party would fight to insulate them from the worst failures of the government, and again called for a greater devolution of power to deliver services —  including transport, electricity and policing — at local level.

“We have to get our cities’ trains running again, at full capacity, if we want local economies to thrive. And to do so, competent metro governments will have to take over this function from the national government and Prasa [Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa],” he said. “This is not something the ANC will give up easily, but the DA has never backed away from a fight. We will succeed in this, sooner or later.

“Another area where we will succeed is in the provision of reliable electricity to residents of DA-run metros and municipalities. Eskom’s inability to keep the lights on is the single biggest threat to our economy, and we cannot let them sink our country like that.”

Steenhuisen said the party had a pilot project underway in the Western Cape, where six municipalities are preparing to procure their electricity directly from independent power producers.

“When this pilot programme has been completed, we plan to roll it out to other DA-run municipalities too.”

A promise to end load-shedding in Cape Town in this manner has been the campaign slogan of the party’s mayoral candidate, Geordin Hill-Lewis. The city is even more crucial to the DA because internal polls show that it will fare worse in the rest of the country than it did in 2016 with Maimane at the helm.

Leader of the DA John Steenhuisen campaigns in Port Elizabeth. (Photo by Lulama Zenzile/Gallo Images via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, the EFF has indicated that it has set its sights on the eThekwini municipality in hopes of being in government. 

In 2016, the EFF committed to aligning with the DA on an issue-by-issue basis, because Malema said the party was not yet ready to govern. 

His sentiment changed in 2019 when the EFF put up candidates when the mayors of Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay were ousted. The EFF had also been in talks with the ANC in 2019 in what would have been a barter for Tshwane and Johannesburg that never materialised. 

In its manifesto launch, the EFF also opened its doors to new headquarters, which it named Winnie Madikizela-Mandela house. 

The EFF was also defiant about the government’s Covid-19 lockdown regulations that limited political rallies to 500 people. The party’s manifesto launch in Johannesburg drew crowds in their thousands. 

Malema characterised the EFF’s manifesto as a “roaring lion” that will see the party storm the polls as voters look for a socialist response to South Africa’s problems.

“We will do so with single-minded determination to ensure total victory for a socialist alternative that has long committed itself to the task of uplifting the lives of ordinary Africans,” he said.

The EFF, which had wanted to have the elections postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, said the party’s central command team had consulted people in wards across the country to understand the challenges they face.

“All EFF members and members of the community have played a central role in guiding the manifesto. This is an organic manifesto: not a book of promises, but a contract of commitment to the people of South Africa,” Malema said.

The former DA mayors of Cape Town and Johannesburg, Patricia de Lille and Herman Mashaba, are contesting their first local government elections at the helm of the Good Party and Action SA, respectively. 

Both have campaigned on an anti-corruption, better service delivery ticket, but Mashaba has caused a disturbance with xenophobic messages against immigrants. 

For Maimane, the polls will be a bellwether on turning his One South Africa Movement, currently an umbrella for independent candidates, into a fully fledged political party.