If you want to know where South Africa is headed economically and politically, forget the ANC. If anything shows that the party’s ability to shape and implement policy has almost totally collapsed, it is its annual January 8 celebrations.
If you were an investor interested in South Africa’s policy direction in 2005, you would have rushed to the FM’s first edition of the year to glean what the party’s annual January 8 statement had said — and meant. It would have been a prudent move because the ANC dominated the government with a 70% majority and its then president, Thabo Mbeki, had the admirable habit of implementing many of his party’s policies.
In January 2015, you would have rushed to the pages of the FM because the ANC, celebrating its 103rd year in existence, still commanded a majority (62%) and was in the throes of change. Racked by splinter formations (the EFF had been born just two years before and COPE was dying), factions and intense rivalries, it was a party in flux. South Africa could sink with it. So what it said and did mattered.
The ANC today has lost society. It would be hard-pressed to get the citizenry to unite around any programme.
In a packed Cape Town Stadium in 2015, then president Jacob Zuma told the party faithful: “Let us rededicate ourselves to the core values of the ANC, that of self-discipline and service to the people.”
Reading the FM after his words would have helped one read the tea leaves and work out that his party was turning against him. Two years later he was out.
It tells you something about the state of the ANC today that this year it could not organise itself to book Cape Town Stadium (capacity 58,000) in time and was hawking around the city in December looking for a venue for its celebrations. It ended up at a venue that takes just 2,000 people.
It was reduced to just 40% of the votes in last May’s elections. It now sits in a coalition with the DA and eight other parties.
What the ANC’s 113th birthday celebrations last week underline is that where once the party was the “leader of society”, it is now just one element of society. It’s a shadow of its former self. In 1985, when the ANC was banned and its leaders in prison and exile, it could galvanise key sectors of society to rise up against apartheid. In that year’s January 8 statement, delivered by Oliver Tambo from exile, the organisation entreated supporters to “render South Africa ungovernable and to make apartheid unworkable”. What followed was the most intense period of civil disobedience the country had ever experienced.
The ANC today has lost society. It would be hard-pressed to get the citizenry to unite around any programme. Last weekend, when President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined six priorities for the party and said the ANC had to either renew itself or perish, many were not listening. The ANC is now so weak that not much it says will move society or translate into workable government policy.
ANC leaders and members who bothered to attend the party’s celebrations know that the urgent crisis that we face is the lack of jobs. This week hundreds of thousands of matriculants will be added to the job (or rather, jobless) market.
Unemployment stands at a staggering 32.1% (third quarter of 2024). There are 8-million unemployed people. The youth unemployment rate is 45.5% or a total of 4.8-million. Something is wrong here, and the ANC’s 30-page manifesto failed to address this crisis with innovation, imagination or urgency.
So, the prudent investor or citizen should know that what really matters in terms of policy and its implementation this year is the survival and operability of the government of national unity (GNU). If the coalition arrangement holds despite the lack of realism and urgency among some of its constituents, it is possible for South Africa to find a way to higher economic growth, some serious new foreign direct investment, and hopefully a boost in job creation. The ANC on its own cannot do it.
The GNU is, however, proving to be fragile. The ANC and its president seem adamant that they will ride roughshod over opposition and business concerns on aspects of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act and the National Health Insurance Act. Such intransigence is unfortunate and places the GNU in danger.
The GNU’s rise or fall — and not the ANC alone — is the game to watch.
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