A group of ANC veterans has called on the party to convene an urgent non-elective consultative conference to develop countermeasures following its embarrassing electoral decline earlier this year.
The discussion document, which has been sent to the ANC headquarters, Luthuli House, is likely to form part of the discussions in the consultative conference if convened.
“Otherwise, our movement as we know it will die, and the victory of the democratic revolution will remain an illusion, and frankly, the betrayal of decades of struggle,” writes Thami Ntenteni, Malixole Mahlathi, Zakes Tolo, Maholi Phala, and Phakamile Ximiya in a discussion document titled “The 2024 Election Results Signal Threats to the Democratic Revolution and its leader, the ANC”.
The authors, who describe themselves as “concerned members of the African National Congress who also spent the greater part of our adult lives serving the ANC prior to and after the national democratic breakthrough of 1994”, said the proposed consultative conference must include not only the branch membership of the ANC and its alliance partners, but also the structures of the mass democratic movement.
“The results of the 2024 national general elections are the clearest demonstration of the electorate’s loss of confidence in the movement.
“Having reached this point, if nothing visible, clear, and even dramatic is not done urgently, the ANC will die,” the document reads.
They noted that the loss of support was not just a once-off thing, but the decline had been happening for a while.
In 2004, the party was riding high with almost 70% of the vote. Fast forward to 2019, and that number dropped to 57.5%.
And now it was down to just 40.18%, and for the first time since 1994, they did not even get 10-million votes.
To explain why voters were turning their backs on the ANC, the document stated that when democracy first dawned, the ANC was the hero promising a better life.
But over the years, things did not exactly go as planned. From 2008 to 2022, the economy only grew by a measly 1.2% a year, and the unemployment rate is at 32.9%.
Additionally, infrastructure is crumbling, and crime is rising.
According to the authors, under President Cyril Ramaphosa, things had not improved much, as more people were jobless, and the economy was still in a rut. Crime continued to skyrocket, and corruption became worse.
However, the document noted that other political parties have not seen a significant increase in popular support to match the ANC’s decline.
“This draws attention to the urgent task of the ANC to reach out to these sectors of our society that remain to benefit most from the victory of the NDR to try to strengthen their support of the democratic revolution.
“Our recent experience suggests that the ANC will have to focus, especially on those
sections that have taken the lead in withholding their electoral support for the movement. Many in these groups have always been ANC supporters,” the document continued.
The authors said the ANC has two strategic tasks to focus on without wavering “… to ensure that wherever the ANC serves in government, at the national, provincial and municipal levels, it turns the page and actually delivers the goods and services expected in each of these spheres of government”.
“And to undertake the actual renewal of the ANC, informed by what the movement has identified during the last 30 years, that the quality of membership of the ANC has deteriorated … because of the entry into its ranks of careerists who do not believe in the values and policies of the movement.”
