BIG READ: Is this the beginning of the end of the ANC?

While this critical question could have been squarely put after the historic electoral defeats the governing but embattled and crisis-ridden ANC government suffered in the 2016 local government elections — when it lost the most powerful metros of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni to opposition parties — the further losses there last week have palpably and ominously emphasised its significance and relevance afresh.

But the results are now so much more glaringly adverse for the party that it is both valid and necessary to ask: are we seeing the beginning of the end of the once apparently unconquerable ANC, which strode the political stage during the liberation struggle and the first decade of the postapartheid era like an indomitable colossus?

The electoral declines of the local elections are startling. In the powerhouse of production and the financial nerve centre of the economy, Johannesburg, the ANC fell from 49.6% in 2016 to 33.60%; in Tshwane from 41.5% in 2016 to 34.63%; and in Ekurhuleni from 52.7% in 2016 to 38.19% in 2021.

The majority of registered but very unhappy people in black townships voted with their feet by staying away from the polls.

So gravely emphatic are such declines, especially for an incumbent party and against the background of 2016 defeats, that we are fully entitled to ask that sobering question.

But it gets even more ominously obvious that the ANC is in serious trouble when we look at the fact that it lost outright control of the eThekwini metro, down from 57% in 2016 to 42.02%. Even in Mangaung, in which its birthplace of Bloemfontein is situated, the ANC’s majority was slashed from 57.9% in 2016 to 50.63%.

Only in two metros out of eight — Mangaung and Buffalo City — did the ANC retain control. These results speak for themselves about a governing party in precipitous and by all indications probably irreversible political and especially electoral decline.

But not even such a negative image of a rapidly declining ANC could prepare us for the news that the EFF won 51.67% and the ANC just 31.67% of the vote on Robben Island, which was historically and symbolically associated incomparably more with the ANC than any other party of the national liberation movement.

Robben Island is of crucial political and symbolic significance, given the historical fact that it was there that Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and many other ANC leaders were imprisoned for decades by the racist apartheid rulers, the former Nationalist Party.

This resounding defeat of the ANC there followed a litany of complaints from black workers employed on Robben Island and their families. The ANC did little or nothing about such grievances and complaints. Much news about the chronic neglect of the place by the ANC government and many allegations of corruption surfaced in the media, especially about the disappearance or misappropriation of funds allocated for the development and rehabilitation of the island.

In addition, the ANC achieved a majority in only 161 municipalities out of 278, with 66 of them hung because no party emerged with a majority of the votes. But another damning indictment of the ANC, as the governing party since 1994, is the fact that of the 26.2-million registered voters only 12.3-million, less than half of them, voted. Since 1994 we have never had such a poor turnout at the polls.

Therefore, clearly, the majority of registered but very unhappy people in black townships voted with their feet by staying away from the polls.

While there are various factors to account for this dismally poor voter turnout, an analysis of media reports and accompanying political analyses and commentary make it abundantly clear that the palpable failures of service delivery in black working-class townships, where the overwhelming majority of the voters live, are the main reasons. In fact, that was the main reason the ANC lost the three major metros in Gauteng in 2016.

To the contrary, conditions have got worse in those metros since 2016, despite promises, once again, from the ANC that service delivery would get much better, after noting with great concern the poor voter turnout at the polls. That is precisely why most black voters in the townships, from their own painful and bitter experiences and the related memories of the many broken promises, but in much greater numbers, decided to stay away from the 2021 polls.

In fact, we had more township protests between 2016 and 2021 than we had between 2011 and 2016. It is important to realise there is nothing that pains and disappoints ordinary black people, especially in a supposedly postapartheid ANC-led government, more than unfulfilled electoral promises about their living conditions and related services, especially around basic daily needs, such as water, sanitation, electricity, health and housing.

Hence, township protests, because of their focus on these issues, are reliable indicators about how the electorate feels about the quality and quantity of daily basic services, what has become known as service delivery issues, an umbrella term that involves many considerations the media often fails to explore, especially around existing legislation and related public and social policies that govern the provision of municipal and public services.

For example, knowledge about the provisions of the Municipal Systems Act and its effect on services delivered in townships is important, but you will hardly find journalists or political parties, especially the ANC, critically interrogating and exploring them during the period of governance or when election manifestos are decided on.

Nobody asks if there is a causal relationship between townships protests and the provisions of the Municipal Systems Act. What the act did, which the apartheid regime did not even do, was to essentially commercialise, corporatise and commodify basic services.

It is out of those processes that we have companies such as Johannesburg Water, City Power and others, and it is after the passage of the Municipal Systems Act in 2000 that they were formed, and thereafter we had the installation and, in fact, imposition of prepaid water and electricity meters in black townships, often amid violent resistance from the affected communities.

For example, the army was called in to complete the imposition of prepaid water meters in Phiri, Soweto, in the early 2000s. These meters have had a negative effect in black townships, especially for poor households, which most people who don’t live there don’t even know about.

This lack of knowledge of municipal legislation governing basic services by journalists and analysts seriously limits our understanding of the origins of township protests, what fuels them and their chronic and indeed unstoppable nature.

In this regard, the black township revolts that began in June 2004 have not only never stopped but have worsened to the extent that, largely as a result, SA has for several years been the protest centre of the world.

However, undoubtedly, the ANC since 1994 consciously took advantage of and exploited the lengthy historical loyalty, especially of the “African” (in the racialised and divisive apartheid sense) majority. As a result, it did little to change the deplorable conditions in black townships, even after it lost the most important municipalities in the country in 2016.

The indisputable and most shocking fact, the consequences primarily of the neoliberal policies of the ANC governing basic services and the wanton corruption and incompetence of its leaders at local level, is that today the conditions in those areas, and in the working-class townships of coloured and Indian people too, are worse than they were under apartheid. Since this is my area of study, I challenge any ANC leader to even attempt to contradict me.

But right now, it is the worst and most difficult time imaginable for the sinking ANC ship to change direction or “renew” itself, that enduring myth it has been tirelessly recommitting to since its 1997 Stellenbosch conference.

Instead of pulling together in the interests of party unity, the warring factionalist interests and divisions of the ANC’s internecine strife have worsened over the years, especially when former president Jacob Zuma took over the reins of state power in 2009 and facilitated the unprecedented inroads and opportunistic leverage the notorious Gupta family were able to make upon it.

The hard, stubborn and irrefutable fact is that a troubled and unstable party has been torn asunder by its own internal factionalist divisions and contradictions, pivoted as it has been not on a genuine resurrection of a lost vision and noble goals, but on a defensive, frenzied and competitive pursuit of remaining, but rapidly dwindling, state resources in a looting spree that did not even spare the personal protective equipment with which to combat the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today the conditions in those areas, and in fact in the working-class townships of Coloured and Indian people too, is worse than it was under apartheid.

Hence, I’m afraid to say that the ANC has gone too far off the rails, so to say, of the vision and goals of the Freedom Charter it adopted in 1956; the Reconstruction & Development Programme it adopted in 1993, but abandoned in 1996; and even the fulfilment of the Bill of Rights in our constitution, to even return to that better half, remnants of which undoubtedly still exist.

To craft a genuinely new, inspiring and invigorating way forward amid the debilitating, devastating and generalised chaos and ruins we can see in virtually all black townships today and the hollowed out state of the party, following the local election results, will in fact be close to insuperable.

However, what is clear from the election results is that ordinary black voters, many or most of whom voted for the ANC since 1994, have had enough of being taken advantage of by the party, by being little more than convenient electoral cannon fodder for it to stay in power. The ANC, I believe consciously, abused this historical loyalty and its associated popularity since it resoundingly won the 1994 elections.

Because nothing stays the same, especially when the trust of voters is wantonly abused for many years, the ANC lost major metros in 2016.

But not only did little change in the black townships, in some respects, especially as regards access to water, sanitation and electricity, things have got worse since then.

The electoral cannon fodder they have largely been for the ANC is now fast coming to a most welcome end.

I conclude this piece on a worrying note regarding the future of the ANC and this country after the local government election results.

The disappointing results for the ANC have imposed coalition governments in six metros and on all the contending parties. My argument is that, by their nature, especially within an unprecedented economic and social crisis in local government and the dire lack of social justice over many years in black townships, which is precisely why there was a low turnout at the polls, coalition politics is unlikely to succeed, especially in the biggest metros, like in Gauteng, and elsewhere in the country, where unemployment, poverty and inequalities are higher than ever before.

Key to local government over the next five years is going to be service delivery and the related aims of greater social justice, for which purpose-appropriate policies and programmes are of the highest importance.

In this vital regard, there are serious differences between the ANC and other opposition parties, such as the DA and EFF, which includes land and service delivery issues. Hence, temporary coalition government arrangements and agreements are undoubtedly going to be much more difficult to secure, sustain and navigate.

Choppy waters on all sides of coalition government are inevitable, and it is exactly such a precarious and unstable situation that is likely to militate against effectively and cohesively addressing the worsening social crisis in black working-class townships especially, where the vast majority of voters reside.

To make matters worse for the ANC, but which is itself an accurate reflection of its huge political and electoral decline, the DA and the newly formed ActionSA, of which former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba is the leader, have stated that they will not go into coalition arrangements with the ANC.

On the other hand, the EFF has as firmly stated that, until the ANC agrees with its policy stance on the crucial land question of expropriation without compensation, it will not enter into any coalition governments with it.

Clearly, many smaller parties that did relatively well against the ANC at the polls and, as a result of smelling blood on the floor, appear eager to exact their pound of flesh from it, even when it is visibly ailing, severely wounded, bleeding and shaken by its most recent losses.

But such are the brutalities and vicissitudes of politics and power.

• Dr Ebrahim Harvey is an independent political writer, analyst, commentator and author of ‘The Great Pretenders: Race & Class under ANC Rule’, published by Jacana in May.