IEC lifeline can’t rescue ANC from implosion

The Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) cannot prevent the divided ANC from implosion.

On Monday, the IEC threw the party a lifeline by reopening municipal election candidate lists. Precedents where the IFP and others were denied similar latitude were cast aside as the IEC bent over backwards to accommodate the ANC.

The incompetent governing party had failed to submit lists in 93 municipalities.

Even if the IEC overcomes legal challenges to this reopening of the candidate lists, the ANC’s selection process is unlikely to run smoothly.

Rivalry at branch level has intensified after former president Jacob Zuma’s faux incarceration and the attempted insurrection in July.

For myriad reasons, including Covid lockdowns and the wanton destruction of businesses by cadres, the economy is in a terrible state.

Unemployment has reached record levels. All of which makes for fiercer competition for local government jobs.

Desperate times.

Tensions within the ANC were on display at the weekend funeral service for former uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association president Kebby Maphatsoe.

ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe was booed by toyi-toying, gun-toting cadres demanding Zuma’s release. Which was granted within hours in the form of Shaiky “medical” parole.

Zuma supporters plan beast-slaughtering celebrations to welcome home their hero, while a visibly deflated President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a low-energy closing address at his party’s national executive committee lekgotla.

Ramaphosa was outfoxed when Zuma’s ex-spy boss Arthur Fraser, appointed by Ramaphosa as commissioner of correctional services, announced the former president’s parole.

As party leader, Ramaphosa has much to be glum about. If the ANC does submit updated candidate lists within a new time frame, it still won’t be able to fund election campaigning in its usual extravagant style.

There will be no CR17 kitty like the one used for his internal campaign to become ANC president. The Political Party Funding Act has closed many taps.

No doubt taxpayers’ money will again be abused for election purposes by municipalities.

But this is a party which hasn’t been able to pay its staff for more than two months. There are limits to how much unpaid workers will exert themselves for a dying cause.

As Carol Paton writes in Business Day: “The ANC campaign will have to be smaller and cheaper. The big, loud campaign with free T-shirts, lunch packs for volunteers and celebrity performances, will not be possible. As the ANC campaign has been responsible for significant mobilisation, during which period support increases substantially, this will be a new danger for the party.”

The ANC is predicted to again drop below 50% in metros, including Johannesburg, Tshwane, Gqeberha and, this time, even Ekurhuleni.

In 2016, Zuma was a negative factor in ANC local government election results. Five years later, in a different role, his influence is again dragging the party down.

This is positive. The ANC is incapable of fixing decaying municipalities.

Now, others will have more opportunities to do what must be done.