Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi has conceded that support for the ANC in the province could plunge as low as 40% in the elections next year and that Gauteng voters have lost faith in the party.
Lesufi said that to hang on to power in the province the ANC would need to partner with a party that had about 10% support or more — which probably meant the EFF, which won about 15% of the votes in Gauteng in 2019.
Lesufi’s candid acknowledgment of the ANC’s electoral woes is in line with the predictions of many analysts that the ruling party could drop below 50% support nationally in the general elections next year.
Lesufi, his party’s chair in the province, said the working relationship the ANC and the EFF had formed in Gauteng metros was an indicator of things to come after the 2024 polls; those who foresaw a marriage between the ANC and EFF at provincial and even national level were not far off the mark.
Unfortunately our voice is not trusted
— Panyaza Lesufi
Last weekend, at the DA national congress, opposition leader John Steenhuisen called the likelihood of a national ANC-EFF coalition next year a “doomsday” scenario that had to be prevented. He proposed that all anti-ANC opposition parties agree to a “moonshot pact” whereby they would try to form a coalition with enough votes to seize the reins of power and freeze out the EFF.
“Absolutely, they are right to be worried,” Lesufi told the Sunday Times. “The ANC will not drop below 40% in Gauteng, so we will need a 10% party.”
The same was likely to apply at national level. “There’s no way you can have an agreement at the province and not have it at the national level.”
The ANC-EFF partnership is making headway in Gauteng with the help of minority parties and is fully in control of Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni.
Lesufi noted that in the 2021 elections the ANC in Gauteng went from controlling 11 municipalities to running only one.
“As I’m speaking to you now, it’s only two municipalities that are out of reach, Midvaal and now Tshwane,” he said. “From losing 10 out of 11 to possibly having nine out of 11, in any language that’s a major achievement.”
Lesufi said the ANC had greatly benefited from the falling out in Gauteng between the EFF and the DA. The two parties had co-operated to keep the ANC out of power in several municipalities, including Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni.
“We took advantage of … the anger of the EFF against the DA,” he said.
“We’re bringing back all these municipalities. Not because the ANC should lead, but the ANC should play a supportive role, utilising our experience and utilising our muscle as a national organisation that has a footprint in every area.”
Lesufi admitted the ANC had agreed that smaller parties such as Al Jama-ah and COPE could appoint mayors in the municipalities it had won back with the EFF because voters had lost trust in it.
“I think the Gauteng phenomenon is misunderstood badly. We recognise that we were very weak, and any form of governance was going to paralyse us because we don’t have the numbers on our own,” he said.
“Unfortunately our voice is not trusted. The only major mistake we made was a Makwarela type of a mayor, a Thapelo type of a mayor,” he said. Thapelo Amad of Al Jama-ah is mayor of Johannesburg and Murunwa Makwarela, from COPE, was briefly mayor of Tshwane before quitting under a cloud.
“If we had a Colleen Makhubele type I doubt we would have had the minor backlashes that we had,” said Lesufi, referring to the COPE speaker in the Johannesburg council. “If we had another person who was not Makwarela we would not have lost Tshwane, for example.”
But the strategy of appointing mayors from other parties was “deliberate, to say our voice is not trusted”.
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