It is too soon to tell how much impact past ANC leaders will have on the party’s electoral fortunes on May 29, but it would be a mistake to dismiss their role in the final leg of the campaign.
This past week, the ANC pulled out of retirement the old guard of Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, David Mabuza, Mathews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale to bolster its campaign. The focus of the door-to-door campaign and meet-and-greet with township residents was initially on Mpumalanga and Gauteng.
The leaders have yet to appear side by side with the top seven of the ANC, including party president Cyril Ramaphosa. Since they joined the campaign, the ANC has enjoyed good media visibility and leaders have been warmly received where they have visited.
Mbeki, who was ousted a year before the end of his second term, remains popular. He presided over a period of strong economic growth and a budget surplus, and in 2004 he led the ANC to a two-thirds electoral victory. These achievements, which were undone by Jacob Zuma’s nine years in power, remain in people’s minds and help bolster the ANC’s broader narrative push that it has lifted SA up in its 30 years in office.
Phosa, who served only one term as Mpumalanga’s premier during Nelson Mandela’s presidency, is still a respected figure in his province. Mabuza, formerly deputy president of the country, and Sexwale, Gauteng’s first premier, still resonate with many people, judging from the reception they received this past weekend.
The focus on Mpumalanga and Gauteng is because both are considered at-risk provinces for the ANC. In Gauteng, where the ANC just scraped through the 50% mark in 2019, the party faces a serious challenge from the EFF, DA and Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA. In 2021, the party failed to win any of the metros outright. In Ekurhuleni, it is governing in coalition with smaller parties, including the EFF.
In Mpumalanga, the divided ANC — some of its executives are on suspension for attempted mutiny charges — faces a challenge from Zuma’s MK party.
The ANC, which has since suspended Zuma, has shown that it does not know how to deal with him. Fearing violence at Luthuli House, the party has now postponed his disciplinary hearing — which was due today — until after the elections.
ANC elders who have not been tarnished by the state capture era and today’s economic decline have served the ANC’s campaign in other ways too. Critically, they are all united in denouncing Zuma as a rogue who needs the book thrown at him. This is the message the incumbents at Luthuli House have battled to articulate. Instead, they have given Zuma’s campaign oxygen, despite his having a half-baked and entirely regressive manifesto.
But the role of the ANC’s erstwhile leaders is also to ask voters to take into consideration a broader sweep of history when placing their votes — and perhaps to avert their eyes from what has not been achieved in the past 15 years. As they are asking voters to give the ANC another chance, the old guard have been able to be more candid about the failures of more recent times and the need to confront these after the elections.
The real weight of their campaign will be known only after May 29. However, between now and then, it remains to be seen whether the past leaders can persuade voters to give the ANC another chance, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s stronghold.
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