The ANC will not win elections because of its manifesto. The ANC has proposed its sixth manifesto since 1994 on its vision to transform society post the apartheid government.
The party’s tenure in government has been a mixed bag of losses and gains. Given that the ANC is a liberation movement, its core mandate was to resolve the national question. Focus needed to be placed on liberating those who were oppressed. As the movement says, it fought to liberate black people in general and Africans in particular.
The plight of Africans remains amplified in their destitution of poverty, unemployment, poor education and unimaginative policies for their enterprise. Praises mounted on an expanding black middle class notwithstanding, the ANC has not managed to emancipate Africans from the doldrums of landlessness, poverty and dehumanisation in their majority.
The praises on an expanding black middle class overlook the reality that this grouping of people is heavily indebted.
This was crystalised by President Cyril Ramaphosa, citing a study by the SA Institute for Race Relations that said the number of cars purchased in South Africa has grown exponentially, indicating a growing base of people who are able to be car owners.
The reality is that many of the car owners afford them through mortgage. This locks people into a system of debt due to poor public transport, even though the ANC has been promising - at least for the last 10 years - to build a safe and user-friendly, integrated public transport system.
This unmet promise is partly at the heart of our problems.
People would love to have access to an efficient public transport system that can get them to work and other places at an affordable price with emphasis on its reliability. Instead, people opt to own cars so that they can be secure on how they get around. Yet, if the public transport system were efficient people would not find a need to own cars and they would have more money for savings and to spend in other productive sectors of the economy.
The imagination on public transport has been shoddy from government. The bus rapid transit system implemented has not been spatially integrative enough. It seems to cater for the poorer communities while not venturing into suburbia in the metros where it has been implemented.
I feel that energy and public transport are two important factors in determining the viability of a country’s economy.
People need to get to work fast and cheaply. In some communities people leave home at 4am and return at 8pm. This is not good for the sustenance of families and raising children in a way that is values centred because the children end up raising themselves.
However, these are nitty-gritty policy issues. The public is interested on the aesthetics and how the ANC handles the perception that it is made up of corrupt leaders who are only interested in benefiting themselves. When Ramaphosa took over the party he promised a new dawn.
This dawn would usher in vast improvements in how the ANC carries out its business. This includes the people who are elected to represent the ANC in legislatures and Parliament, the policies that the ANC proposes to the electorate, the conduct of ANC representatives in government across all three spheres.
This is what the vast majority of South Africans will measure the ANC against. It is not its manifesto that is important.
Manifestos are hardly read by the majority of voter aged citizens. People are mostly looking at perceptions about individuals and the party when considering who to vote for.
The South African democracy turns 25 this year, a significant milestone considering how all the elections since 1994 have been pronounced as “free and fair”. The country has been committed to ensuring that our elections are safeguarded and everyone enjoys an equal chance of participating.
The ANC must, to an extent, be applauded on this as other liberation movements across the continent have seek to contaminate the independence of democracy building institutions such as the electoral commission, the media and the judiciary.
For this reason, the country’s citizens were able to exercise their agency against former president Jacob Zuma’s administration through protest and litigation. Citizens came out in droves to stand up for the virtues of our Constitution and to affirm their commitment to the democratic ethos. As a result, the ANC was forced to act. It elected Ramaphosa as its president and removed Zuma.
However, given political limitations on his ascendency, Ramaphosa has had to compromise. It is this compromise that could harm the ANC come 2019 election polls. There are individuals that Ramaphosa feels he ought to protect and appoint into his Cabinet despite the public’s disapproval.
Some of the people he removed from his Cabinet in 2018 are busy running the election campaign of the ANC - such as Fikile Mbalula and Malusi Gigaba.
Zuma himself remains a permanent feature of the ANC with Ramaphosa referring to him at Ohlanga High School as “ungqondongqondo” - the wise one.
South Africans were caught off-guard and almost bewildered as to why Ramaphosa needed to be so generous on his praise singing of Zuma. The ANC still cannot take the country into its confidence as to why Zuma needed to be recalled as the president of the country.
It appears the organisation has two scales of morality and consciousness in managing its internal political affairs and its conduct in government. Voters are starting to see through this façade and they demand greater accountability from those who promise a new dawn.
This is what will determine the prospects of the ANC in the 2019 election - its ability to convince the electorate that it acknowledges its past mistakes and commits to a different future of rapid service delivery and emancipation of the oppressed black people in general and Africans in particular.
The people of South Africa know the ANC’s promise to them, it is the execution that they want. It is the dream deferred that they want fulfilled.
Mnguni is a PhD candidate and researcher at the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit, University of KwaZulu-Natal