ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe recently released a breakdown of those voting branch delegates who will determine the outcome of the ANC’s all-important elective conference in Gauteng, to be held between December 16 and 20.
The numbers are as follows:
On average, branch delegates have always accounted for about 90% of all delegates the ANC recognises. This is again the case in 2017. The remaining 10% are made up of delegates from the party’s leagues, its national executive committee and provincial executive committees.
This analysis focuses exclusively on branch delegates.
Every ANC branch with a minimum of 100 members is awarded a delegate. Thereafter, every additional 250 members qualify that branch for an additional delegate.
In this way, the party incentivises membership recruitment: the more members a branch has, the greater the number of delegates it can send to conference. Thus, over time, both the ANC’s membership and the size of the branch delegate pool have increased dramatically.
The ANC has held six national conferences since 1994, including this year’s. Its 49th conference overall was held in December 1994 in Bloemfontein; its 50th in Mahikeng in 1997; 51st in Stellenbosch in 2002; 52nd in Polokwane in 2007; 53th in Mangaung in 2012 and the Gauteng conference at the end of 2017 will be its 54th.
Reliable, audited ANC membership numbers are not available prior to 1997 or since 2012, but it is possible to track their increase against branch delegate numbers for the intervening period.
The last public membership figures given by the ANC was by President Jacob Zuma to the party’s National General Council in October 2015, when he infamously bumbled the line. He put the number then at 769,870. He said of the decline: "Those who have joined find themselves being used as voting fodder or to rubber stamp decisions of those who control the affected branches. Such a state of affairs and other challenges with our membership system, could be the reason why our membership has dropped from more than 1-million members during the centenary in 2012 to 769,870 members."
That 2015 figure makes the number of branch delegates in 2017 hard to explain. For the total to have climbed once again (to 4,731, up 628 from 2012), means the membership must have dramatically increased in turn. But the ANC would need close on 2-million members to justify that number, if previous trends are anything to go by. This means the party would have had to sign on about 1.3-million members in the 24 months since October 2015.
There have been widespread reports of fake memberships in numerous provinces, all of which the ANC is investigating. Nevertheless, having already determined the branch delegate numbers, it must have used membership figures it deems reliable and, if the number of delegates is to stand, the ANC’s membership is going to have to demonstrate a remarkable increase since 2015, when they are finalised.
Another unintended consequence of the ANC’s formula, and possible explanation for the increase in membership, is that it would seem to incentive the splitting of branches. If a branch has, say, 600 members, that would qualify it for three delegates (one for the initial 100 members, then two additional delegates for the 500 additional members). However, if that branch were to split into six branches, each of 100 members, that would mean six delegates could be sent.
The ANC’s 2017 branch numbers are not known at this stage and it was not possible, for this analysis, to consistently track the numbers over time.
However, there is some ad hoc information as to their size. In 1997, the ANC reported, "1,000 fully fledged branches". The 2002 organisational report before the Stellenbosch conference reported that there were 2,232 branches in good standing as of August 31 2002. At the 2012 conference in Mangaung, Gwede Mantashe stated that "the 1,220,057 members of the ANC are in 4,307 branches, of which 3,687 are represented in this conference. This means that 620 branches have not qualified to attend."
So, what evidence there is certainly suggests an explosion in the number of audited branches in the decade between 2002 and 2012 (up by 1,455, from 2,232 to 3,687 — an increase 65%) — and a massive increase of 2,687 branches (or 268%) since 1997. That is not including disqualified branches. It is likely that trend too, has continued into 2017.
In 1997, the average number of members per branch was 385. In 2012, the average was 330. So the size of branches has decreased over that period, suggesting that the splitting of branches is certainly a factor.
With regard to the trends defining the breakdown of branch delegates by province over time, a number of interesting, recent patterns emerge. Of them all, two in particular stand out: the collapse of the Eastern Cape as a powerful voting block and the rise of Mpumalanga. Each is worth analysing.
The Eastern Cape rose from being the third-biggest branch delegate block in 1997 to totally dominating voting at Polokwane, in 2007. Then, at the height of its power, it commanded 906 or almost one in four of all votes (24.7% of all branch delegates). But, since Jacob Zuma came to power at that conference, its influence has steadily waned, down to 676 votes (or 16.5%) in 2012 and, again, down to 648 votes (or 13.7%) in 2017.
In the other direction, Mpumalanga has come from nowhere to now stand as the second-biggest voting block ahead of the 2017 conference.
The province had fluctuated somewhat between 1997 and 2007, but by the time Polokwane came about, Mpumalanga sent just 325 delegates and represented just 8.8% of all branch delegates. That put it behind five other provinces. Since then, it has steadily grown in influence, up to 467 branch delegates in 2012 (or 11.4%) and, again, up to 736 delegates in 2017 (or 15.6%), making it the second-most powerful provincial block, behind KwaZulu-Natal.
Interestingly, if you map its increase in influence against its electoral performance (using the provincial ballot in each national and provincial election preceding the relevant conference), it has actually declined. This means that although externally Mpumalanga is getting the ANC less support, internally its strength is curiously growing.
It is true that the province did perform well in the 2009 elections, jumping to 9.9% of all ANC provincial election support. However, in 2014, it declined marginally, down to 9.5%. Nevertheless, the number of branch delegates it was able to send to the 2017 conference spiked dramatically.
By comparison, the Eastern Cape did not decline as a percentage of all ANC provincial election support in 2014, holding firm at 13.9%. Its delegate share, however, dropped significantly.
That said, even if the 2017 delegate numbers for the Eastern Cape do appear to be an anomaly, there can be no doubt that the province has suffered a steady and significant loss in electoral influence since 1994. Back then, it represented a whopping 20.2% of all ANC provincial electoral support (almost 2.5-million votes), the most of any province. Over the course of the next five elections, it has lost almost 1-million votes and now represents just 13.9% of all provincial electoral support, putting it in third place.
There are some other trends worth noting.
Based on the two tables above, the following relates:
• Table 2: Despite consistently pulling in a fifth or more of all ANC provincial electoral support (19.9%, 23.7%, 22%, 23.8% and 21.4%), Gauteng regularly gets only about half of that in voting branch delegates (14.2%, 12.6%, 9.6%, 12.2%, 10.7%). It also illustrates the trend that membership is tied more to internal dynamics than to external performance.
• Table 1: The North West also experienced a significant spike in delegates in 2017, almost doubling from 2012 (up from 234 delegates to 538, and 5.7% to 11.4%), the most it has ever sent to a conference by some considerable distance.
• Table 2: KwaZulu-Natal has systematically grown its share of all ANC provincial electoral support since the 1994 election (9.7%, 11.1%, 12.2%, 19.6%, 22.6%) all the way to 2014, when it overtook Gauteng to become the province with the biggest share of all support. Since 1994, it and the Eastern Cape have effectively swapped places, as electorally, KwaZulu-Natal’s rise and the Eastern Cape’s decline run in almost exact opposite directions.
• Table 1: In 2017, there are six ANC provinces whose percentage of all delegates is in double digits. This is the first time that this has happened since 1997. At face value, it appears to be the most even spread among the provinces across all five conferences since 1997.
• Table 2: The ANC’s decline in the Western Cape, which has always had a small share of the provincial spread, is not just represented electorally but also in terms of its delegates, the percentage of which has shrunk from 7.6% in 1997 to just 3.8% in 2017.
• Table 1: The most consistent provinces, with regard to their share of branch voting delegates, are the Free State, Limpopo and the Northern Cape.
• Table 1: The most volatile is the Eastern Cape, which has experienced an 11 percentage-points swing from its height in 2007 (24.7%) to its low in 2017 (13.7%).
• Table 1: The highest number of delegates a province sent to a conference over this period was the 974 KwaZulu-Natal sent in 2012. The lowest was the 105 the Northern Cape sent in 1997.
It is difficult to properly evaluate the political dynamics underpinning the 2017 voting branch delegate numbers without access to the ANC’s latest audited membership numbers. They would appear to be the only thing able to explain the huge fluctuations in numbers in provinces such as the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga.
Certainly historically, it has been the ANC’s drive towards a relentless increase in membership that has resulted in its branch delegate allocation ballooning to extraordinary proportions. Only this time, it is going to be difficult to explain how the publicly reported fall in ANC membership — by President Jacob Zuma in October 2015 — is going to be accounted for, because the delegate numbers often bear little resemblance to electoral performance or vote share.
Up until 2012, provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal have massively capitalised on the ANC’s conference delegate formula. Its 331,820 members in 2012 (27.2% of all delegates) no doubt accounted for the unprecedented 974 delegates it sent to that conference. But there have been huge jumps across the board, and other provinces, such as Mpumalanga, have increased its membership by almost 100,000 since 1997.
Surprisingly, the Eastern Cape is second only to KwaZulu-Natal in this regard, having grown by about 140,000 members since 1997. Yet it has lost delegates, so membership does not fully explain the numbers.
What is clear, is that the ANC’s internal election dynamics have taken on a life of their own, seemingly entirely detached from electoral performance; the monster it has created is an organisation that has now irrevocably linked membership to internal power. Every year, as the ANC declines electorally, the internal monster seems to get stronger — even when what evidence there is suggests the mechanics in this regard are broken.
Science has it that when a sun starts to die, once it has burnt up all the hydrogen at its core, it begins to collapse under its own gravity. Only, perversely, it doesn’t shrink, but grows, expanding ever bigger as desperately it seeks out fuel to consume on its margins. Its glow becomes duller and its temperature lowers as it becomes a Red Sun, but still it grows, and grows. Until, eventually, when it has consumed everything, when even the pretense of strength is no longer sustainable, it will eventually fold in on itself. Then all that remains is a small dwarf star, a tiny reminder of the giant that once dominated.
• Methodological Note: Audited ANC membership figures are drawn from ANC Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe's Organisational Report to the 52nd National Conference, December 17 2007 and City Press September 30 2012. All election figures are drawn from the IEC website (elections.org.za) using the provincial ballot for the respective 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 national and provincial elections. All delegate and branch figures are drawn from the Organisational Reports delivered respectively at the 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012 national conferences (anc.org.za), Sunday Times, July 17 2007 and a letter from ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe to all Provincial Secretaries, October 6 2017.
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