The Zuma years associated the ANC with ‘badness’ – Mbalula

It’s clear that there is no longer any love lost between ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula and former president Jacob Zuma.

Mbalula was once associated with loyalty to Zuma, and campaigned for the then ANC president’s preferred successor, Zuma’s ex-wife Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

However, a new internal ANC survey has confirmed the results of other polls, which found that President Cyril Ramaphosa is more popular with the voting public than the rest of the ANC put together – with Ramaphosa at a 73% approval rating and the ANC at 60%.

Ramaphosa is also clearly more popular with Mbalula now, despite Ramaphosa having removed him from cabinet in one of his first big moves after he replaced Zuma as the country’s president in February last year.

Mbalula told the Sunday Times, while commenting on the results of the survey ahead of elections on May 8, that he welcomed the public’s generally positive perception of Ramaphosa, since the president and ANC were closely connected anyway.

He said voters’ antipathy to the ANC was “because of where we come from with an ANC that was associated with badness because of the head of state [Zuma]”, said Mbalula. He added that Zuma had affected the ANC’s image “because he was viewed in relation to state capture as the president of the country and the ANC, and that caused damage to the ANC”.

He expressed confidence in Ramaphosa’s new dawn as a “strategic era”.

Last month, Mbalula went as far as to endorse the view that Zuma had actually helped the opposition DA to grow during his years in office.

In a Twitter reply to the DA’s Johannesburg mayor, Herman Mashaba, debating the DA’s billboard claiming the “ANC is killing us”, Mbalula wrote: “U guys [the DA] u dont have a campaign u never had even bfo, Zuma years helped u a lot [sic all]”.

The vandalised DA billboard listed the late alleged victims of poor ANC governance.

Many political analysts have often repeated the view that Zuma’s time in office was galvanising for the opposition, which was able to seize on numerous personal and corruption scandals surrounding Zuma to criticise the ANC and attract voter support.

In the 2016 elections, under Zuma, the ANC dropped to just under 54% of the national vote, which was catastrophic in particularly three major metros, which it lost control of for the first time.

Late last month, Zuma and Mbalula also had a public fallout on Twitter, with Zuma using the platform to snap back at Mbalula after the former police minister had criticised and questioned Zuma for campaigning in Limpopo.

ALSO READ: Let’s not discuss ANC policy on Twitter, Zuma admonishes Mbalula

(Edited by Charles Cilliers)

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