The beauty about Bafana Bafana’s great performance is that we no longer need calculators to determine whether the country has qualified for the Fifa World Cup or African Cup of Nations.
Remember how the soccer boffins miscalculated one time and we got booted off? Our soccer boys have rediscovered their mojo; it’s a thing to behold. Even the administrative bungles of fielding suspended players can’t dampen the great confidence that has returned to this team. The calculators of yesteryear are out the window.
Not so for the ANC, this congress of the people. I am certain some ANC leaders ran out of batteries while computing options after the last general elections. The ANC has almost forgotten that it plummeted to 40% in electoral support, a 16-percentage-point drop from the 56% received in the 2019 general elections. This performance, correctly contextualised, is a 28.5% drop.
This is a confidence crisis. This is not something you glibly attend to by reconfiguring two provinces and hoping for the best. In a matter of months, the ANC will need to put its best foot forward in the municipal elections — or need much more than calculators to figure out how to move forward.
Right now, though, the ANC is very busy.
It’s pulled in many different directions. Its leaders must resolve governance issues relating to the changing geopolitical environment since the election of US President Donald Trump, ensure a budget is passed by Wednesday, fix municipalities that are falling apart and ensure the spectre of load-shedding rearing its ugly head remains firmly in the past.
All this while not forgetting to fight rampant crime, sort out the chugging economy and, when there’s time, remembering to create much-needed jobs. Internally, it must figure out how to stop the succession battles that are firmly under way. It’s a lot. But the party must guard against being busy for its own sake.
How the party and government are performing isn’t the point here, the point is simply that the many things that need to be accomplished coincide with the party’s existential battle.
Its poor electoral performance, almost a year ago, was supposed to force it from its slumber into self-correction. A year after the slump, the self-correction should be self-evident, especially to those who used to vote for it. Yet its leaders are running from one crisis to another hoping to resolve governance issues, while the party’s existential challenges wait in the queue — exactly where the ANC’s enemies want them.
At a press conference on Saturday, the ANC's national executive committee announced it had formed a task team on municipalities that require urgent interventions. Ahem. Which one doesn’t?
To be clear, the point is not for the ANC to prioritise itself ahead of the governance storms before us but rather for its ambidexterity to be on show. That the ANC is between a rock and a hard place this weekend as it figures out how to get its proposed budget over the line, with a midweek deadline for political support looming, is to state the obvious. The DA and others may be keeping the ANC so busy, so distracted that it has no time to think about its survival. The DA has also introduced a new set of demands to its initial list as a quid pro quo for the budget vote. Hard ball by the blue party, perhaps.
Or simply a clever stratagem informed by the ANC’s inability to manage the vicissitudes of governance while ensuring party survival. It’s also possible that the ANC is being obstinate about the VAT increase for no reason. When it allowed finance minister Enoch Godongwana to table it without a deal, what was the plan? The numbers are still not adding up. Could it be they glibly thought other parties would have no option but to agree with them? That they would make them see reason? Because only they are imbued with the rare ability to see reason ahead of everyone else, despite failing to address the reasons for the party's waning support? Perhaps the numbers will add up by Wednesday.
Whatever the solution, the dawn of the government of national unity has spawned several challenges that have kept the overlords at Luthuli House busier than usual. If being this busy was helping ensure an elevated delivery of services to the populace, that would be great. But sooner rather than later, they need to wake up to the reality of fast-approaching municipal elections. Or be shocked at how low the ANC could fall from 40%.
At a press conference on Saturday, the ANC's national executive committee announced it had formed a task team on municipalities that require urgent interventions. Ahem. Which one doesn’t? And that’s a great pity because when big and small metros struggle, it is the voters who suffer.
But also, coming up with a strategy to fix the many challenges isn’t, in itself, a solution. The strategy must still be implemented, and, even after successful implementation it may still not be enough to stop the confidence crisis. It may simply lead to a calculation of a reduced rate of loss of support, which is still a loss to worry about.
In Gauteng, the ANC has had to calculate who has what numbers and who could help form a minority coalition. Ditto Gauteng metros. Premier Panyaza Lesufi is a man whose back is firmly against the wall, given the impatience of the urban voter, but the ANC might need bigger calculators in Gauteng metros if the party continues to master the art of looking busy while nursing a precipitous decline.
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