It is extremely hard to get President Cyril Ramaphosa and his advisers to “wake up and smell the coffee”. Civil society organisations, business leaders, the media, and many others have for years warned him about the tinderbox that is the illegal immigration issue, along with police corruption, municipal rot, and a plethora of other dangers writhing just under the surface of society. He and his beloved ANC hardly ever take notes or act until there is a crisis.
These ignored crises led to the ANC’s walloping in the May 2024 elections. Yet, at 40% of the electoral haul for the ANC, that result will prove to have been just a warning shot. Unless there is a drastic change of plan, the ANC faces disaster in the local elections on November 4. This is no longer news, of course. Every political hack in the country has predicted this, but ANC leaders pretend all is hunky dory.
The disaster for the ANC on November 4 will be followed by near-extinction in 2029. For a long while I held the belief that the ANC’s decline would be gentle, with a fall to 30% and a hold at that level for a decade or so. I no longer think so. A proper trouncing awaits the ANC in 2029, and after that only the splinters such as the EFF and the MK Party — and a minor party carrying the name ANC — will be left.
The ANC needs only to look at this week’s events in the UK and at its political ally, the Labour Party, to see its future. Two years ago, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer led Labour to power with the biggest parliamentary majority in Britain’s modern history. Now, on the eve of the anniversary of his historic victory in July 2024, Starmer has been ousted by his comrades because he has failed to come up with and communicate a clear vision for the future.
“He had no big idea,” wrote Reuters simply, devastatingly, on Monday as Starmer read out his resignation speech.
Ramaphosa, and his reformist crew in the ANC, had a big idea: sweep out the rot from their own party, reintroduce market-friendly policies from the Mbeki era, capacitate the state, and march boldly towards economic growth of above 5% a year.
The problem is that they had little or no plan to implement their big idea. They have dithered and dilly-dallied. Even now, nine years after he took over as ANC president, business and many other sectors of South Africa laud Ramaphosa for his idea of “a new dawn” — but not for its implementation.
Nine years is a very long time in modern politics. The fact that we are still praising a man for holding the right ideas, instead of implementing plans, is pretty damning. It sounds harsh, but the numbers speak loudly: anaemic growth still hovering at around 1% a year, and youth unemployment at 61% while general unemployment sits at 32%. The needle has not moved. Where the needle has seemed to move, it has been hard to work out the contribution of the ANC part of the administration to that bit of success.
The fiasco now unfolding over illegal immigration and the xenophobic attacks orchestrated through the “March and March” movement will add to the perception (and reality) that the ANC does not have a plan for migration. The ANC’s silence or its catch-up responses will paint it in even worse colours.
At the same time, the rot emanating from the Madlanga Commission and from parliament’s impeachment committee on Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala troubles will further harden the citizenry’s view that the ANC is corrupt.
With an energetic policy implementation plan — and solid communications — it would be possible to come back from such deep troubles. The problem is that the ANC does not have a swift implementation plan for the government it leads. It has no discernible communication plan, or ideas, to turn the huge tide of negativity it faces.
Without a concrete and urgent implementation plan and communication philosophy, there is no clear vision for a future South Africa from Ramaphosa or the ANC. What is left is a hole, a vacuum, that needs filling. Nature abhors a vacuum, and it will be filled, of that there is no doubt.
Who will do that is unclear, but what is certain is that the plan-free ANC will be watching — much like Keir Starmer — from the sidelines.