The race is on for the top six in the ANC, and the outcome will affect us all

Dear readers,

Whether we are bored with the Luthuli House intrigues or not, what goes on in the African National Congress cannot be ignored or dismissed. Just like their apartheid era predecessor, the National Party, which governed South Africa from 1948 to 1994, supported by the minority whites-only electorate, the ANC has consistently been voted into power by the majority of South Africans.

White South Africans benefited royally from their loyalty to the Broederbond-backed apartheid security state and from voting for leaders of the NP to rule the country with an iron fist. Their children had the best education available at the time for free, jobs were reserved for them, and so were houses and suburbs, and access to ownership of  the 87% of the land grabbed from black South Africans who previously farmed and lived there.

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Arguably the most terrible and horrendous sacrifice white NP voters had to make was the risk of losing their sons in the brutal Border War – a war which damaged families as loved ones were lost and it ripped the souls of white SADF soldiers who had to see and do unspeakable acts in battles which few understood, other than the fear of swart gevaar and rooi gevaar.

Are black South Africans just as loyal to the party they perceive to be their liberators – even if they have been disappointed at every turn by broken promises and pathetic mismanagement of state services from health to policing and education – as much as white South Africans were devoted to the NP? Could  the ANC rule for 46 years just like the NP did? Recent polls by Ipsos suggest not. Ipsos found that if an election were held tomorrow, the ANC would get 42%, the DA 11%, the EFF 9% and Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA 3% of the votes at a national level. But as my colleague Tim Cohen pointed out, South Africa is abominably served by pollsters who seem to be way off the mark for every election.

The thing is, since the dawn of an inclusive democracy in which everyone over the age of 18 could vote, South Africans have placed their trust in the party of liberation way ahead of the nearest competition, the FW De Klerk-led National Party in 1994, the Tony Leon-led Democratic Party in 1999 and in subsequent years, the Democratic Alliance under the leadership of Helen Zille and Mmusi Maimane. The next national election will tell us the fate of the DA under its new incumbent, John Steenhuisen (of ex-wife “roadkill” fame), but the fact remains that no one, not even the Brownshirts-emulating, fiery red overall EFF brigade, comes close to wooing the majority of voters from the ANC.

Why am I going on about this? Well the ANC’s national electoral conference in which the party elects its new leadership is happening in December. Daily Maverick political writer Queenin Masuabi has the inside track on who is gunning for the Top Six leadership positions and how the members will go about voting in the people who will most likely be in charge of governing our country after the next election in 2024. Love them or loathe them, what happens to the ANC in December will affect all of us who live here.

Buy a copy of DM168 to stay on top of the race for power and control of the public purse. And share your thoughts on all of this with me at [email protected]

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Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

Heather Robertson is Daily Maverick 168  editor. The newspaper is available countrywide for R25.