THE strategy of the ANC of focusing the election machinery on ministers will backfire on the organisation, political analyst Goodenough Mashego said yesterday.
Mashego said it was pointless for ministers to go around the country promising to supply people with water when they had failed to do so for years.
“This strategy is not going to work because ministers are being associated with what the country has become and if you are a minister of water and sanitation and you go to Giyani, the first thing people will say is that billions of rand have gone down the drain when villages were supposed to be connected.
“You are the minister of police, you go to communities where people have lost faith in the police and you just go there to pretend you are listening to their frustrations. We have seen that in various imbizos, where people vented to the minister with the same issues, with nothing happening,” he added.
Mashigo said ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula was not doing the organisation a favour as he was constantly de-campaigning it as he had forever been seen where he was supposed not to be seen, like in court rooms or even after court rooms to announce that he was going to appeal. Mashigo added that this made Mbalula talk more about other political parties than his own.
“Mbalula talks too much about other parties than the ANC. Given the fact that this is an election year, one expects that one would hear more about the party that is contesting than the party that is contesting against.
“I don’t think as a secretary-general of the movement, he is doing justice to his party. One would also understand why it is like that, as there is no one in the party who would go out there and do door to door,” he said.
Mashego said the ANC recently relied on polling, as it would use its political history to swing support back into its favour.
He said the electorate had changed, adding that the majority of people who would cast votes were the 2000s generation who only knew load shedding as the history and legacy of the movement.
The party’s national spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, failed to respond to questions sent to her by the time of publication.
Another political analyst, Professor Andre Duvenage, said the ANC was currently in a weaker position in comparison with the time Ace Magashule had been at the helm. At that time the party had a support base of deep into 50% to 60% as opposed to currently being below 50%, with some even giving it 40%, as suggested by Optimus.
“Under supervision of Mbalula, the ANC is facing a number of challenges. This is, however, not his own problem. It links to the general government and governance of the Ramaphosa administration, providing its own set of challenges among its unwillingness to take decisive decisions,” Duvenage said.
He said the ANC was not doing well under Mbalula, citing a number of controversial statements he had made in the public domain.
The Star