2024 elections: ANC’s struggle to maintain majority amid rising opposition

This week – the last of the festive season holiday for many South Africans – has also meant a lull in battle when it comes to politics.

Our hard-working politicians deserve a break from a year of blowing hot air and we, hapless subjects and citizens, deserve a break from that posturing, much of it empty.

But, come Monday, as the ANC celebrates the anniversary of its founding with its annual January 8th statement, we can expect the manure machine to be thrust into overdrive by all of those with their eyes on the elections, which are expected to be held around May.

Many opponents of the ANC have cottoned on to the idea that “2024 is our 1994” – a reference to the fact that this year, the 30th anniversary of the end of apartheid, could similarly witness an uprising at the ballot box which will, for the first time, consign the ANC to minority party status.

The organisation is seemingly well aware that its popularity is at its lowest ebb since Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the country’s first democratically elected president.

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It own luminaries, including secretarygeneral Fikile Mbalula, have warned that much work needs to be done by its grassroot structures if it is not to fall below the 50%-plus one majority.

Despite the posturing of parties like the Democratic Alliance and ActionSA, the biggest threat to the ANC and its core, African, constituency, comes from the Economic Freedom Fighters and the newly formed uMkhonto weSiswe party, with which former president Jacob Zuma has associated himself.

Both have platforms that play to the increasingly disgruntled majority of people who feel their lives have not improved significantly since 1994.

And therein lies the challenge for the ANC, because it won’t be able to write off either off those groups as racist or lackeys of white monopoly capital.