It’s an expensive business, the winning of elections. If you have any doubts, ask the ANC.
Back in July 2016, the then ANC head of campaigns, Nomvula Mokonyane, let slip to a radio station that the governing party had spent more than R1bn in the campaign ahead of that year’s local government elections. Despite that, the ANC was removed from power in Joburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay.
At the time, Mokonyane said the money was spent on holding rallies, paying volunteers, buying T-shirts and preparing candidate lists. And it still lost the urban lung of the country.
It is worth keeping in mind that when a political party speaks about campaign spending, it does not count volunteers’ contributions: a local businessman’s little gift to a local party branch, the use of taxis to transport members to rallies, the funding for the hiring of a sound system.
In 2014, the then ANC treasurer-general, Zweli Mkhize, told a national executive committee meeting of the party that it had spent R429m on that year’s national and provincial elections. The Mail & Guardian reported that Mkhize’s financial report at the meeting indicated that 2014 was “the ANC’s most expensive election ever”. The big kitty did not ensure success: ANC support dropped from 65.9% in 2009 to 62% in 2014.
Even internal ANC contestation is an expensive business, though the whole thing is so opaque we mostly depend on leaks for the numbers. The disgraced and impeached former public protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, now an EFF MP, said in 2019 that there was “merit” to allegations that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s campaign to win the ANC presidency may have used a series of trusts and complex financial transactions to disguise the “laundering” of more than R440m. Her report was utter nonsense and was tossed out by the courts, but it does give us a flavour of the amounts involved.
Astute observers of the ANC will tell you the party should not be underestimated at election time
So after two months of crisscrossing the country and speaking to many ANC volunteers, activists and officials, I have a conviction: the ANC is struggling to raise the kind of cash it used to easily get from business, state-owned enterprises, foreign organisations, cashed-up party members and tender beneficiaries, and others.
The party cannot muster a serious poster campaign, for example. Its canvassers in various parts of the country are being begged to use their own money to attend activations. Jacob Zuma’s MK Party seems to have a bigger T-shirt imprint than the governing party, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal.
Where do you see ANC leaders? Not at ANC functions, but at government “brag events”: addressing young people they have supposedly created jobs for, announcing new business opportunities, and others where government marketing money, instead of party money, is spent.
Astute observers of the ANC will tell you the party should not be underestimated at election time. In the final weeks of previous election campaigns, it almost always managed to take oxygen into its lungs, focus its volunteers and officials and unleash a spurt of speed to pull it across the finish line in first place. These observers caution that one must not underestimate the party’s ability to spurt forward in the final weeks of this election campaign and win again.
Yet, what if the ANC just doesn’t have the cash to run the kind of election campaign it managed to muster back in 2019, 2014 and 2009?
Gwen Ramokgopa, the party treasurer-general, reacted to reports of a cash crunch published by City Press newspaper in March by saying: “The ANC has begun discharging the election plan in accordance with our strategy. There is a meticulous process that includes research and planning that is informed by data so that all our efforts can be responsive, predictable and measurable.”
I don’t buy it. It seems to me the party is facing a serious cash crunch, just eight weeks before the polls. Without the kind of money it used to be able to deploy, its chances of winning a 50% majority are greatly diminished.
When you paint your post-election scenarios, you must now consider four realities: the ANC is broke; the MK Party and EFF are eating its cake in KZN and Gauteng; the ANC’s liberation history is no longer a vote-puller; and the Ramaphosa administration has lost its shine. The chances of an ANC that polls in the low 40% band have increased significantly.
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