ANC losing its grip on power?

’Tis the season to be backstabbing (sometimes literally), paying off branches, making deals and jockeying for positions.

It’s the ANC’s elective conference year and policies take a backseat to personalities.

As the regional and provincial party conferences play out so, too, will the main arena fight between Cyril Ramaphosa and his “new dawn” (does anyone even say that any longer?) loyalists and the radical economic transformation (RET) revolutionaries who idolise Jacob Zuma.

The people? The country? Not important, comrade…

While the caucuses are caucusing (to use a favourite ANC term), however, there are some strong alarm bells ringing in the background for the party, which believes it can, as Zuma put it once, “rule until Jesus returns”.

Those warnings are coming from those who bought into the dream of a “better life for all” and who feel they have been betrayed by the organisation which liberated them.

Political liberation, anyway, was only half of the job – the remainder was ensuring liberation from poverty, racism and unequal opportunities.

None of that has happened – and that is obvious to all.

ALSO READ: EFF, DA snatch wards from ANC in by-election

In by-elections this week, ordinary South Africans were sending the ANC a strong message. And that message was: we’re running out of patience with you.

Even in areas where the ANC retained wards – and they lost a few crucial seats – the opposition parties, from the EFF to ActionSA and DA, all took chunks out of the ANC’s support.

And many voters didn’t even bother to pitch up at voting stations, which further shows that the current politics of the ANC appeals to fewer and fewer.

While it is true that the party still retains considerable organisational capability and will mobilise ahead of the 2024 polls, it needs to do much better if it is to hold on to power.