The once glorious ANC on Saturday struggled to fill up a 20,000-capacity stadium in the North West.
This is where the oldest liberation party in Africa was celebrating 114 years of its existence in its annual pilgrimage known as the ANC January 8 Statement.
At the time of the resumption of the official programme at 12h30 after the arrival of party president Cyril Ramaphosa, there were thousands of empty chairs inside the Moruleng Stadium in the outskirts of Rustenburg.
The failure to fill up the stadium on Saturday is in contrast to about 15 years ago, when ANC supporters would fully occupy two stadiums at once with ease for the same event or an equivalent, such as an election manifesto.
Is this how the mighty has fallen?
Our deepthroats in the higher echelons of the party denied that this was a sign of how the mighty had fallen.
They blamed the empty chairs on the State Security Agency (SSA) apparently hijacking the control of the event by, among other things, denying vehicles carrying T-shirts and food parcels access to the stadium precinct.
These food parcels and T-shirts are usually given out to members of the public as a token of appreciation upon entering the stadium.
The tight control by SSA also apparently stopped buses carrying ANC supporters far from the stadium for security reasons.
“Giving too much power to the SSA is a big problem because they do not know certain things that must be done to make an event of this magnitude a success,” said one leader.
“They stopped vehicles carrying food parcels and ANC T-shirts and some buses carrying people have been told to park far away, and because of the heat, people are camping by those buses.”
Organising events at smaller venues
The ANC has in recent times been avoiding mega venues for its annual anniversary rallies.
In the Western Cape last year, the party did not choose the Cape Town Stadium, Athlone Stadium or Newlands Stadium, instead opting for the smaller Khayelitsha Stadium with just a single tiny grandstand.
This year in the North West, the ANC snubbed the 44K capacity Royal Bafokeng Stadium in favour of a venue just below half the size and still could not mobilise a capacity crowd.
