Unlikely to have comeback muscle
You don’t start with high and end up on the low
ITS leaders might be talking up their campaign, but there is little evidence of an ANC drive to win back the Western Cape in the general election that is just less than seven weeks away.
Provincial secretary Songezo Mjongile was upbeat about the ANC’s chances. He said the party could reclaim the province from the Democratic Alliance.
Mjongile said it was time for the people of the Western Cape to “liberate” the province.
He also defended the ANC’s campaign strategy and said the party was shifting gear.
“In the next 55 days we will be intensifying our campaign ... and major announcements on the shift of voter support will show that, despite the fact that there’s pessimism about the growth of the ANC in certain quarters, the experience on the ground is the opposite.
“Now is the time when people are going to see a heightened high level of mobilisation. You don’t start with high and end up on the low, so now we are moving into the Siyanqoba [we are winning] phase,” he said.
University of Cape Town political analyst Zwelethu Jolobe said the ANC was too disorganised in the province to pose a serious threat to the DA.
It is still paralysed by the 2005 power struggle when branches split between supporters of former premier Ebrahim Rasool and the then provincial chairman, Mcebisi Skwatsha.
“They are disorganised. I don’t think the ANC has recovered from the conflict in the organisation,” said Jolobe.
“There hasn’t really been some kind of re-emergence of a strong group of people who would be able to bring the ANC together and then launch a campaign to unseat the DA.
“They are not as visible and they are not as well managed as, say, the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal or in Gauteng.”
The ANC is concentrating its campaign in the rural towns of the province and has neglected black townships in the crucial Cape Metro region, where the DA and the Economic Freedom Fighters are mobilising.
The Cape Metro has the highest concentration of voters in the Western Cape and any party serious about winning the province knows it needs to work harder there than anywhere else.
Provincial party leader Marius Fransman has sought to position the ANC as the most able to deal with the scourge of drug abuse that has turned many of the predominantly coloured townships into safe havens for criminal gangs.
However, besides the campaign blitz last month, there has been little ANC visibility in the DA-run province — except during times of crisis in poor and working-class coloured communities.
ANC president Jacob Zuma has complained that his party was not doing enough to hold the DA accountable in the legislature. This week, the party appeared to be admitting this failure. MPLs were placed low on the candidates’ list in favour of Fransman and other leaders, such as Richard Dyantyi and Cameron Dugmore, who had served as MECs when the ANC was in charge in the province.