ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Collen Malatji has admitted that the governing party is facing a mountain to climb in KwaZulu-Natal in the forthcoming general elections.
Malatji went further to claim that voters in that part of the country were prone to voting based on tribal allegiance.
In order to deter people from voting based solely on tribal considerations, he charged, targeted voter education was necessary.
Malatji was speaking to the media at Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters in Johannesburg, on Thursday.
He insisted that the ANC would retain its majority in KwaZulu-Natal but expressed concern about the historical voter patterns in the province.
According to him, ANC support was average in the province until former president Jacob Zuma, who was born in KwaZulu-Natal, rose to the helm of Union Buildings.
Leadership reinforced with veterans
“On the issue of KZN [having hung election results], I believe we will win KwaZulu-Natal. We have reinforced our leadership in KZN with veterans from that area,” said Malatji.
“KwaZulu-Natal has a history of people voting along tribal lines sometimes, which is part of the challenge we are faced with.
“If you check the voting pattern in KZN, under the tribalists from Nkandla [Zuma], you saw the ANC increasing votes; when President Cyril Ramaphosa came in, there was a decline because of how they [the KZN people] have been cultured.
“We are saying that through political education, the ANC leadership must go to the ground and educate our people that we are building a nation here; we are not building tribal groupings. That is the plan we are busy with.”
Malatji added that it was for the KwaZulu-Natal voters’ reason that history must also be made a compulsory subject at all South African schools.
On this front, history would teach voters that the IFP was the party at the centre of the political violence in the 1990s and ought to be rejected, he said.
Black-on-black violence
“On the issue of KZN, we must take responsibility. We said many years ago that we want history to be made compulsory — the history of South Africa,” he said.
“Because some generations might not know that there was once an IFP in KZN that worked with an apartheid system to murder and butcher black people, that is why they vote for it.
“They would not know that the IFP were the last ones to agree that we must go into democratic elections in 1994. They have always mobilised along tribal lines.
“The generation of Ama2000 [millennials] does not know that there was a black-on-black war in Thokoza [east of Johannesburg] based on tribal lines.
“Those are the issues we have failed on as the ANC government.”
