With determination and planning, ANC and EFF mobs can be defeated

The unassuming KwaZulu-Natal town of Howick has a political importance that outweighs its modest stature.

Developments in this sleepy Midlands town, as well as the bustling metropolises of Cape Town and Pretoria, are bellwethers as to how our future may unfold over the next critical decade. All three, at present, are controlled by the opposition DA and are, each in its way, critical inflection points.

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There is a general election next year and things are not looking good for the ANC. The Western Cape may soon not be the only province not held by the ANC. Gauteng and KZN may fall to opposition coalitions. The ANC is panicking.

Since the ANC is incapable of running clean and efficient administrations, it’s critical to thwart any attempts by the DA, alone or in alliance, to do so. The more DA-led places are allowed to succeed, the more jarring the comparison with ANC-led squalor and decay.

The battle in August between the Cape Town municipality and the taxi mafia was an important event. At a local level, it was simply whether the powerful taxi associations could intimidate the municipality into allowing the taxis free rein in ignoring traffic regulations. But at a national level, it was a proxy war by the ANC against the DA.

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The forces of chaos lost in Cape Town but the battleground has now shifted. Similar tactics are being deployed against the DA-led administrations of Tshwane (Pretoria) in Gauteng and uMngeni (Howick) in KZN.

In Pretoria, the administrative capital, there has been a three-month union campaign against attempts to cut its astronomical wage bill. Buses have been stoned, hundreds of millions of rands worth of service vehicles torched, and dozens of municipal employees assaulted.

The ANC and the union officials – nudge-nudge, wink-wink – say that they deplore violence and this has nothing to do with them. The ANC strategy appears to be working better in Gauteng than it did in the Cape.

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Resolve is wavering in the face of the growing cost of the police’s inability to keep public order. The MultiParty Coalition Advocacy Group, an attempt to field a serious contender against the ANC in next year’s general election, is fracturing.

In Howick, a town that historically was no more than a blip on SA’s political consciousness became a place of national and international attention in last year’s municipal election. This was because the DA had won, albeit by a razor-thin majority, its first municipality from the ANC.

The DA’s win was largely attributed to Chris Pappas, their charismatic mayoral candidate – a young, white, gay man, fluent in isiZulu. It was a reassuring reminder to dispirited voters disenchanted with the ANC that in SA the unimaginably wonderful can and sometimes does happen. It was also a chilling warning to the ANC that it had become politically vulnerable in ways that it had never thought possible.

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In response, the ANC has moved on two fronts. First, it has applied for uMngeni to be swallowed by two neighbouring ANC-run councils. Second, it has waged a campaign of attrition, with periodic attempts by shadowy groups of populists to “close down” Howick and toss out its mayor.

Last week, just days after the DA announced Pappas would be their candidate for provincial premier in 2024, the ANC Youth League demanded his immediate resignation and arrest on claims of nepotism. The public protector has agreed to investigate the allegations but on Thursday, the ANCYL moved to shut down Howick.

In the face of indifference in the local townships, the couple of hundred people who turned up on Thursday had to be bused in. The shutdown fizzled out to become a scraggly march. Although not on the scale of Cape Town’s defeat of the taxi sector, it was another rare win for law and order.

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And while the war is not won, it’s a reminder that with determination and planning, the ANC and EFF mobs can be defeated.