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Mondli Makhanya: SA’s voters have grown up and cannot be taken for granted by ANC

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Mondli Makhanya is editor-in-chief of City Press.
Mondli Makhanya is editor-in-chief of City Press.

A few elections ago, a close friend was stopped by an ANC canvasser at his gate while arriving home from work.

The canvasser handed him some election material and prepared to move on to his next stop.

My friend asked him why he was just handing him the material and not trying to convince him to vote for the party.

The canvasser casually told him it was not necessary – he was a black man in a nice suburb who had obviously benefited from the freedom that the ANC had brought about.

It stood to reason, then, that my friend would put his X in the right place.

This infuriated my friend, who went on to tell the canvasser that his party should not take black people for granted.

He explained that the only organisation that would have his guaranteed loyalty was Orlando Pirates Football Club.

“Even if Orlando Pirates loses 10-0, I will still be loyal, but your party and the other parties need to work for my love,” my friend recalls telling the hapless comrade during the lecture.

We recalled that interaction a few years later when Pirates had a rather unfortunate season that saw our players score far less than they conceded.

But that is a time in history that we do not wish to dwell on.

This incident comes to mind because we are back in election season and, for the first time, it seems like the ANC finds itself compelled to engage an extra gear in its quest to maintain a comfortable majority.

South Africa’s governing party may still be stubbornly retaining on its election list some of the horror show personalities who terrorised us for the past decade, but it is aware that its every move is being scrutinised by a more conscious electorate.

Gone are the days when ANC leaders could dismissively claim that the voters would back it regardless of whether its leaders were messing up, stealing or abusing public resources.

No longer can it pretend that integrity does not matter in the eyes of the people.

Remember in 2014 when then president Jacob Zuma arrogantly told a victory rally that he had won re-election despite some spending “the whole of their airtime about Nkandla”?

Taking a cue from this, ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said in 2015 that the ANC was not having sleepless nights about public views as the scandal was just “the main issue for the opposition, but it’s not an issue among the support base of the ANC”.

Zuma and Duarte were wrong.

The ANC remained above 60% at the polls, but took a blow in Gauteng, where it dropped to about 53%.

Gauteng voters inflicted more pain in 2016 – the party lost control of two metros and only just held on to a third.

In the case of Gauteng, the ANC had not only taken the public for granted on issues of misgovernance, it also failed to listen to very loud grumbles about the e-tolling system.

In a 2014 post-election report from the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, researchers gave clear insight into the changing mind-set of the voter.

They noted that the ANC’s support was “concentrated” in more rural parts of South Africa, where there was a greater level of dependence on the state for services and basic necessities.

“Because of relatively high levels of deprivation, rural folk have a much larger reliance on state largesse ... The impact of state support, therefore, is palpable in people’s lives. This translates into favourable disposition towards the incumbent,” the institute said.

In the urban areas, ANC support in informal settlements and RDP zones – where there was greater dependence on government intervention – was stronger than in older, more settled townships, where income and the standard of living was presumably better.

The residents of established townships and those in the middle class were also likely to put a greater emphasis on issues of probity.

“Because they are less reliant on state largesse, these sections of society seem to emphasise issues of ethics and corruption in their electoral choices. While these issues may be of concern even in poor communities, they do not predominate in the same manner as they do among middle class voters in terms of voting decisions,” the institute found.

As election day draws closer, the ANC is giving mixed signals on how seriously it is taking past lessons.

It definitely knows where it went wrong, but sections of the party are not willing to take on board the learnings.

Hence some of the inexplicable decisions and actions that may alienate voters in an election during which the party can barely afford to take risks.

Those who are hellbent on ignoring the lessons of the recent past are also contemptuous of the new kids on the block who are likely to bite tiny pieces out of the ANC’s pie.

While the ANC focuses on the DAs and the EFFs, irritants such as Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Mzwanele Manyi and a host of pro-Zuma shards also pose a danger to its core base.

In this election, the majority party is fighting a battle in which the DA is now a common and accepted feature in the lives of black people, the EFF is appealing to the sense of urgency around issues of transformation and redress, and in which the voter is more discerning and demanding of leaders.

As the message has gone through that the ANC is not the only home for the black voter, the landscape for the elections becomes a heck more interesting.

The South African voter has grown up.


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