Absent from the public debate over whether ANC structures in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng should be disbanded is their track record in governing their respective provinces.
The ANC nationally will debate whether to disband in these provinces at an upcoming national executive committee (NEC) meeting, after tense discussions and a lengthy process of engagement with the lower structures in the two provinces that took place over the past two months.
The cratering of support for the ANC in the two provinces was a major factor in the party’s overall 17 percentage point decline in the May 29 election, in which it lost its outright majority for the first time in three decades.
The ANC’s support in KwaZulu-Natal fell by a staggering 37 percentage points from 54% to 17%. In Gauteng its support dropped by 15 points, from 51% to 36%.
The main factor that diminished ANC support in KwaZulu-Natal was the emergence of former president Jacob Zuma’s MK party, but the party’s decline in support in the province actually began in 2016, albeit slowly at first.
In Gauteng the dynamic is quite different — the ANC’s support in the province has been in steady decline since 2014. It narrowly retained a fingertip grip on the province in 2019 due mainly to the ascent of President Cyril Ramaphosa to the top job in 2017.
Internally, the debate has been needlessly complicated by internal ANC politics. ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo has argued that the party’s national leadership should also be collapsed if electoral decline is the central factor behind disbandment. It is a bit of a chicken and egg argument, since the party would have maintained its outright majority nationally had KwaZulu-Natal not bottomed out so dramatically.
In any event, it was Mtolo and the KwaZulu-Natal leadership since 2017 who failed to make a decisive break with Zuma and all he represented, weakening the ANC both nationally and provincially. From former ANC KwaZulu-Natal chair Sihle Zikalala supporting Zuma in court to Mtolo’s consistent idolisation of the former president until the very end — when Zuma announced he would be voting for MK in December last year — it was the ANC itself that kept the Zuma “second coming” narrative alive in the province.
Then there are those arguing that succession politics is behind the drive to disband the two provinces, since both are likely to line up behind deputy president Paul Mashatile for the party presidency in 2027. Perhaps this is a factor, but an astounding thing happened in our politics in May, and gone are the days when the country’s first citizen will be decided by the ANC alone. What is missing from the debate is a simple and painful truth — governance in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng has all but collapsed.
The most populous metropolitan cities in both provinces — eThekwini, Johannesburg and Tshwane — are broke, falling apart and unable to deliver basic necessities such as water and sanitation. In KwaZulu-Natal the beaches have had to be shut repeatedly due to raw sewage flowing into the sea.
A key arterial road in Johannesburg, Bree Street, collapsed due to an explosion a year ago and nothing has been done to repair it. Hospitals in both provinces are collapsing under the weight of corruption and mismanagement. In KwaZulu-Natal ANC chair and economic development MEC Siboniso Duma spent most of his time shadowing former premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube, whose role was reduced to ribbon cutter for the past two years lest she outshine him.
Gauteng is simply collapsing under spin doctor turned premier Panyaza Lesufi, a showman who has managed to single-handedly destroy the three large metros in the province after the 2021 local government election. They were on the skids in 2016-21 when messy DA-led coalitions governed them, but the final nail in their ability to deliver was hammered in by Lesufi.
Provincial competencies such as health, infrastructure, education, social services, roads and economic development are unimpressive to say the least. Lesufi prefers outsourcing governance, as his latest “adopt a robot” campaign shows, so that he can entangle himself in more pressing matters such as factional fights.
The ANC in Gauteng’s performance in government can be tracked by looking at the staggering decline in residents’ perceptions contained in the Gauteng Quality of Life Surveys of the past few years. There is a direct correlation between the decline and Lesufi and his provincial executive committee’s ascent.
If the ANC NEC hopes to win back support in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng it will have to disband its structures in the two provinces and put in place a technocratic, governance-focused, dynamic leadership that makes a discernible difference to people’s lives.
• Marrian is Business Day editor at large.
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