The ANC has corrupted transformative policies, resulting in an erosion of support for them and a loss of confidence in the party’s ability to implement them.
The former liberation movement finds itself in a strange position: since 2017, it has doubled down on what it terms transformative policies, which to its political opponents appear more radical, populist policies — land expropriation without compensation, National Health Insurance and enhanced employment equity provisions.
Yet, contrary to its own expectations, its electoral support has taken a sharp downward turn.
In its analysis of the 2024 election, the party should be including why and how the doubling down on these policies has actually harmed it at the polls and why its decline is expected to continue.
Polling by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) indicates a disconnect between what voters, ANC voters included, want and what the party has on offer.
While the ANC’s leadership and diehard loyalists may be dismissive of polling by the IRR, its data ahead of the 2024 national election was spot on in capturing the mood of the electorate. The institute has also been quoted extensively by former president Thabo Mbeki as he sought to explain what went wrong in the party and the country, since its electoral peak with a two-thirds majority in 2004.
The IRR polling found that the vast majority of South Africans across racial groups view job creation as a top priority, 84% of those polled support merit-based appointments instead of appointments based on race, 82% of respondents indicate that value-for-money state procurement should trump race-based appointments and 68.1% of the respondents oppose the Expropriation Act, which allows for nil compensation, and prefer the protection of private property.
Political analyst Mpumelelo Mkhabela explains that the outcome of the polling is far from a shift in society’s need or desire for transformation and transformative policies to deal with the imbalances of the past.
What it does represent is a recognition that the ANC’s capacity to implement such policies in the interests of ordinary South Africans, and not in its own interests, is in serious doubt.
“The ANC’s problem is that it’s got all these transformative policies, but it has corrupted these policies. So people don’t see value in these policies, however desirable they may sound, especially when they are packaged in a way that suggests that they are meant to address the historical imbalances of the past,” he said.
“This has opened the way for its opponents and even its supporters to doubt the feasibility of these policies ... and the question is whether the ANC can change course. My answer is no, it is embedded in its ways and its leaders derive personal benefit from these policies.”
Mkhabela uses public procurement and BEE as an example since ANC policy has always been to use state procurement to tackle the imbalances of the past.
“When you front-load ANC comrades to benefit from those policies, those policies lose credibility. It becomes worse when those very same comrades don’t deliver.
“Now the argument is that you front-load your comrades, they steal the money, they can’t complete the project and when it is completed, it’s not good quality.”
The time for doubling down on such policies is over because the ANC has proven that it cannot be trusted to deliver on them. Another example Mkhabela uses is the now reversed appointment of the sector education and training authority chair positions. Higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane appointed well-connected comrades to lead up billonrand-budget Seta’s, which the DA exposed as a crass form of cadre deployment. Nkabane had appointed her former boss, mining minister Gwede Mantashe’s 27-year-old son, Buyambo, as the chair of a manufacturing Seta.
Social Research Foundation director Frans Cronje told Business Day that the ANC’s support base and the SA electorate is “moderate, pragmatic and staid” in their views. He tracks the ANC’s decline in electoral support to its doubling down on populist, radical policies since the ascent of former president Jacob Zuma to party president in 2009.
“The ANC does best historically when investor confidence lifts and on the back of that fixed investment increases, on the back of that growth and jobs are created and these numbers feed off each other quite directly.
“I think they’ve put themselves in a very negative spiral as a consequence of this [radicalisation]. I think if in doubt, more moderation and pragmatism in policy, centrist thinking, lift ANC support from this point, but you don’t see a lot of that [in the party today],” he said.
Cronje said the ANC has been doubling down on populism and radicalisation since it began losing support in 2009 and the impact on its electoral fortunes has been clear for all to see. Despite its poor record of implementation, just the existence of these policies has thwarted employment-creating growth and investment.
The ANC in Gauteng is a prime example of the way populism accelerated its decline. In 2014, the ANC in the province lost 10 percentage points in electoral support. This was somewhat halted under former premier David Makhura, whose moderate and pragmatic outlook appealed to business. Its electoral support stabilised at 50% in 2019, but bottomed out under populist premier Panyaza Lesufi in 2024, to just 35%.
Gauteng is the most glaring example of the ANC’s failure to read the electoral mood. The party’s continued failure to do so nationally will result in its inevitable march towards electoral oblivion.
• Marrian is Business Day editor-at-large
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