The ANC is pinning its hopes on the Eastern Cape to help claw back the votes it expects to lose as a result of supporters throwing their weight behind Jacob Zuma’s newly formed uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party.
It is also looking to Limpopo and Mpumalanga, which are among the provinces it considers its strong voting bases, to be able to pull through a large cohort of voters on May 29 and ensure the ANC sustains a majority in the national election.
According to the latest survey by global market research company Ipsos, ANC support could fall to 40.2% while the MK party, founded in December 2023, could receive as much as 8.4% of the votes.
ANC elections head Mdumiseni Ntuli said the MK party was not a major concern for the ruling party, but noted there had been a number of influential figures who had defected from the ANC and joined the MK party, including Zuma.
“The MK party is imploding, which is not surprising for us,” Ntuli said. “We knew this was not an organisation that would have a huge impact on the election campaign as it was anticipated.
“They are going through an internal imploding due to expanding. There are figures who have left the ANC, including Zuma himself, who decided to join the MK party and those are votes we’ve lost.
“But it doesn’t mean they have the capacity to pull massive numbers in KwaZulu-Natal to secure a victory for the MK party or for the ANC to lose the province.
“According to our research, they will have an impact but not as it is projected in the media and sometimes by their own public statements.”
Ntuli, who is a former KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary, said their concern and focus was the ANC’s own ability to mobilise its base to go out in large numbers and vote.
This is where the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga come in, where the ANC secured 68.74%, 75.49% and 70.58% of the votes in the 2019 general elections.
These figures represented a decline in the number of votes received from the previous elections in 2014.
In KwaZulu-Natal, however, the party is on shaky ground as it received 54.22% of the vote in the 2019 elections, which represented a drop of more than 10 percentage points compared with the 2014 results where the ANC received 64.52%.
In Gauteng, the ANC is expected to get below 50% of the votes, which would force a coalition government in the province. In 2019, it had received 50.19% of votes which was just enough to hold on to its majority.
Ntuli said the ANC was stronger in the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo than any other provinces.
“Those provinces must give the ANC a minimum of 80% support. It’s possible and it has happened before. We need to improve our capacity to reach as many people on the ground. In the past, the issue wasn’t people voting for other parties but rather not coming out in big numbers to go and vote. Hopefully, we don’t get many people indoors during voting day,” Ntuli said.
He said the party’s campaign would be amplified by deploying more high-profile members such as former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe.
Mbeki recently hit the campaign trail in Gauteng. On Sunday, former ANC deputy president David Mabuza joined the fray in Tshwane.
“We have a leadership that’s all over the country, high-profile individuals within the movement, former leaders, and that gives us an advantage that no other party has,” Ntuli said.
“What we’ve seen over the past few weeks will be amplified as we head to the elections because when it comes to the ANC leadership compared to other political parties, we have a footprint in every corner of the country and the campaign will be enhanced by former leaders.”
On how the ANC would likely perform at the polls, political analyst Prof Mcebisi Ndletyana said it was quite clear the party would most likely lose its majority status in most provinces except for the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.
“They’re likely to remain in those three provinces because they don’t have a serious opposition,” Ndletyana said.
“In the Eastern Cape, the DA mounted something at some point but that threat has since dissipated and since then no other party has reasonably posed a challenge. ActionSA has tried to establish some presence here through [former DA leader] Athol Trollip but I’m not sure how successful that venture will be, mainly because ActionSA has not attracted credible black leaders as far as I can tell,” Ndletyana said.
“Trollip has been a success largely in white politics, even though he’s got some level of appeal to black voters, but even with the appeal he hasn’t been able to attract them,” he said.
Ndletyana said the low turnout from the 2016 municipal elections that saw the ANC lose power in Nelson Mandela Bay would likely happen again on May 29.
“The ANC didn’t have serious challengers then but because of a low turnout in its constituencies and a large turnout in DA wards, this had a serious impact on the votes.
“We will see a huge turnout in coloured communities because parties such as the PA have been on the rise,” Ndletyana said.
On the MK party, Ndletyana said its supporters would be voting for Zuma’s face.
“MK’s appeal is a shining example of charismatic appeal,” Ndletyana said. “They’re voting for Zuma, largely on the basis of ethnicity and partly to some degree discontentment with the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government.
“Unless the MK party infighting is such that the fighting is impacting the organisation and starts impacting its visibility, that’s where the danger is.”
Political analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast said there was a direct relationship between voter turnout and slow pace of service delivery.
“People normally grapple with the question of what’s in it for them,” Breakfast said. “People don’t vote just for fun but vote to see change in their lives. If people observe there’s been no change for a few years, they tend to lose interest in politics. It becomes worse among young people.
“Looking at unemployment, young people struggle to make ends meet, which is why they’re throwing in the towel,” Breakfast said.
He said one of the reasons the ANC looked to its base was because the three provinces were largely rural and that was where its power lay.
“If you look at where the ANC has been dealt a blow, it’s in urban areas as opposed to rural areas. The ANC lost control in the City of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni municipalities. They govern two through coalitions. This is the same for the eThekwini and Mangaung municipalities,” Breakfast said.
“The ANC tends to do well in rural areas because traditional leaders are on the government payroll,” he added.
ANC Eastern Cape chair Oscar Mabuyane said their campaign had started a bit sluggishly due to the unavailability of posters, but they were now able to talk to people and grab low-hanging fruit.
“Campaigning is going very well and generally our province is stable, but I can say a lot of people are now paying attention to the Eastern Cape and would want to destabilise us going to [the] 2029 general election. The Eastern Cape is a target because people are desperate to get votes for the Eastern Cape. There’s infiltration in every sector,” Mabuyane said.
“All provinces must perform. All provinces have targets to meet. We’re not thinking of any coalitions but there are provinces that have proven over time to be the electoral base and the Eastern Cape is one of them.”
Mabuyane said the ANC needed to respond better to the issue of natural disasters, adding that the unfortunate part was that the Eastern Cape as well as KwaZulu-Natal had been hit by them.
He said the province did not receive adequate funding to respond to the disasters. “If we had enough money from national to respond to disasters, we’d be on a much better footing.”
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