Elections aftermath: Why did the ANC ignore its own research?

[Steve Hayes]

Elections aftermath: Why did the ANC ignore its own research?

Ranjeni Munusamy South Africa 12 Aug 2016 01:19 (South Africa)

Photo: President Zuma speaks at the Siyanqoba rally before the local
government elections, 31 July 2016, Ellis Park stadium, Johannesburg.
(Greg Nicolson)

“This is Radio Freedom, the voice of the African National Congress and
its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe…” The ANC is a long way from the
days when a crackly prohibited radio broadcast from exile was the only
way the organisation communicated with ordinary people in South
Africa, and yet loyalty was unwavering. Now, 22 years into democracy
the ANC spent a reported R1 billion on an election campaign that
delivered its worst ever electoral performance. The ANC’s national
executive committee (NEC) meeting is being closely watched to see how
the party assesses its performance and responds to the backlash from
voters. But the party’s own research rang the alarm bells before the
poll and this was disregarded. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.

The ANC’s four-day NEC meeting involves the very people presiding over
the demise of the party undertaking a process to evaluate its
performance in the 2016 local government elections. How can the people
causing the problems suddenly fix them, you might ask? But then, the
goal is not to fix the problems but to deflect responsibility for them
and to find a way to draw people back to the party with the least
disruption as possible to the way the ANC functions.

The issues causing anger and disgruntlement with the ANC have been
well known. Throw a stone in the air anywhere in the country and it
would hit a person who can no longer bring themselves to vote for the
party. The ANC’s own research warned that there was a danger of a
significant loss of support in the metros. Still, it was just not
anticipated that the dissatisfaction would reach a stage where the
ANC’s access to power and resources would be cut off.

The ANC’s top six leaders, President Jacob Zuma, his deputy Cyril
Ramaphosa, national chairperson Baleka Mbete, secretary general Gwede
Mantashe, his deputy Jessie Duarte, and treasurer general Zweli
Mkhize, and the 80-member NEC seemed upbeat during a media photo
opportunity at the start of the four-day meeting on Thursday. The
meeting is being billed as a frank assessment of the election results,
which will involve breakaway commissions to fully unpack what
happened.

The reasons for the ANC’s poor performance, evident in the drastic
drop in support nationally to 53.9% and in all provinces except
KwaZulu-Natal, are complex and manifold. While an honest assessment is
required, it is expected that respective factions will opt for
scapegoating and finger pointing about who was responsible for the
disastrous results. One thing that the ANC has already ruled out is
that Zuma will be the subject of scrutiny. Although he is widely
credited for the damage to the ANC’s reputation, the NEC is apparently
not prepared to discuss the president’s substantial contribution to
voters turning away from the party.

“We want to do a thorough analysis of the elections, but there is no
item ‘president’,” Mantashe told reporters. “We will check‚ are we in
decline and is it a trend that will continue forever‚ and what should
we do to arrest that trend and turn it around.”

With regard to coalition talks and alleged demands by opposition
parties that the recall of Zuma be a precondition for co-operation,
Mantashe said:

“I will never go to any political party and put a condition to say
‘remove your leader’. If it is done to us, it is an issue we must deal
with in the negotiations.”

Mantashe disputed that the ANC was arrogant and thanked those who did
not vote for the party, saying they had received their message. What
will the ANC do with this message though?

The problem with these 86 NEC members discussing the election results
is that it is the same 86 people who decided to accept Zuma’s apology
for the Nkandla saga and the same 86 people who decided to close down
the investigation into “state capture”, the euphemism for the Guptas’
control of the state.

Many of the people who sit on the NEC are themselves involved in
scandals and factional battles, have ardently defended the president’s
flouting of accountability or have the propensity to utter nonsense,
contributing to the ANC’s decline and reputational damage. These were
also the people who decided to close their eyes and ears to the
barrage of criticism from veterans, civil society leaders and
concerned South Africans about the leadership and direction of the
ANC, particularly after the Constitutional Court judgement on Nkandla.

These very same members of the NEC were also responsible for directing
the ANC’s big budget elections campaign and deciding on the
communications and mobilisation strategy. ANC insiders say the party’s
elections research accurately predicted the drop in support and
flashed the warning lights that the ANC would lose Nelson Mandela Bay,
Tshwane and Johannesburg. ANC officials apparently decided to withhold
the research from structures on the ground because they thought it
would “demoralise our forces”. Campaigning at grass roots therefore
failed to address the issues people were concerned about.

Another senior ANC member said the party’s research had shown that
there was serious negativity about the “ANC brand and its leader”.
Issues that contributed to the negative perceptions of the ANC,
according to the internal research, included Nkandla, e-tolls and the
firing of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister.

“This led to an unprecedented number of undecided voters – 10% of
which were our key voters who had knowledge of apartheid and had
consistently voted for the ANC in the past,” said the member who had
studied the research.

Despite this, the people who ran the ANC’s election campaign decided
that Zuma should remain the figurehead and that his image should be on
all the party branding. The ANC’s elections team also decided to
plaster Zuma’s images, instead of the mayoral candidates, at the
airports and on billboards in the contested metros despite this being
a turnoff for voters.

One of the most self-destructive aspects of the campaign was the
negative messaging and venomous attacks on opposition leaders Mmusi
Maimane and Julius Malema.

“They advised the old man to go on the attack, to go into the mud.
That was really terrible,” said a provincial leader.

Among other things, Zuma called Maimane a snake and warned voters that
they would be cursed with bad luck by the ancestors if they voted for
opposition parties. This caused discomfort within the ANC,
particularly amongst some of the veterans, and fed negative
perceptions about the party in the crucial closing stages of the
campaign. However, as it is now customary, nobody called Zuma to order
and he was led to believe that he had been the star performer of the
campaign.

While the ANC might pussyfoot around issues, its alliance partner, the
South African Communist Party (SACP) has been quite forthright about
the poor performance at the polls, warning against “blindly supporting
an individual”. A statement issued on Thursday after an SACP Politburo
meeting said “unless serious soul searching and corrective action is
undertaken, the decline will continue and likely accelerate”.

“It is absolutely essential that these corrective actions are
themselves undertaken in a sober, unifying and non-sectarian manner.
Already there are signs that some in the ANC are bent on doing the
exact opposite. Yesterday’s front page head-line story in The New Age,
for instance, quotes unnamed ‘ANC sources’ saying that the Gauteng
provincial leadership must ‘shoulder the blame’ for the electoral
‘disaster. We are aware that in some quarters there are attempts to
advocate disbanding the Gauteng ANC provincial leadership,” the SACP
said.

“To what extent have national errors affected local electoral
behaviour? Is it true that only a black urban intelligentsia is
concerned about Nkandla? In answering these questions, once again we
need to avoid sectarian positioning, either blindly supporting an
individual, or, alternately imagining that the recall of this or that
personality on its own will somehow solve all problems,” the SACP
said. “The problems within the ANC in particular are systemic and find
expression at all levels, as the horrific local level assassination of
ANC and SACP leaders in the run-up to these elections underlines.”

The ANC has long claimed that it is able to self-correct and deal with
its internal problems. But with so much damage having been done and
the very people responsible for the decline still charged with running
the organisation, how much self-correction and renewal is possible?

The ANC needs a massive overhaul in its leadership, its operating
style, its culture, its approach to governance and its value system.
Mostly, it needs to purge itself of the rot. Whether four days of
navel gazing can initiate such an overhaul remains to be seen.

An organisation that was able to cultivate dedication and loyalty from
exile is now struggling to keep people’s trust with full control of
the state, unlimited resources and access to every corner of the
country.

If that alone does not provoke serious soul searching, nothing will.
DM

https://t.co/bdnbA0hkYF

Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com