Poll tactics: ANC veterans, such as Tokyo Sexwale (above, in the beret), have been campaigning in Soweto in a bid to boost support for the party. (Photo by Gallo Images/Sharon Seretlo)
Despite pollsters predicting the ANC will dip below half in Gauteng in this month’s general elections, the party’s internal research suggests it could win the province with a greater share of the vote than in 2019.
ANC insiders at its “boiler room” in Gauteng, where the party’s election strategies are crafted, spoke to the Mail & Guardian about its recent research.
They said, with a change in its strategy, the ANC was aiming to get 2.6 million votes in Gauteng, which would translate to a 54% to 55% share. This would be achieved with a voter turnout of around 70%, the insiders, who did not want to be named, added.
“There are 6.5 million registered voters in the province. The 2.6 million votes will be mainly received from our strongholds which is why there has been a more targeted focus in the township areas of Gauteng these past weeks,” one said.
Another senior party official, a member of the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) deployed in the province, added that the party’s internal research suggested that, at minimum, it would receive 2.2 million votes in Gauteng.
“If the turnout is lower than 70%, which we think is a possibility, our research suggests we are likely to receive 52%,” they said, adding that this number would be boosted in township areas including Soweto, Katlehong, Thembisa, Mamelodi, Kagiso and Sedibeng.
The ANC’s share of the votes in Gauteng declined to 50.19% in the 2019 elections from 53.59% in 2014. Its support slid from 2.4 million votes in 2019 to just 958 000 in 2021 — a monumental drop even when taking into account that these were local government elections.
According to the Electoral Commission of South Africa, Gauteng has the largest registered voter block, accounting for 23.45% of the national tally, while KwaZulu-Natal comes a close second with 20.79%. The Eastern Cape has the third-largest voter registration numbers at 12.42%.
During a door-to-door campaign in Ekurhuleni this week, Gauteng provincial secretary TK Nciza told the M&G the party’s campaign had previously not been strong, due to national issues.
“We have done so much in the past four years, especially how national has been focused on cleaning up, especially the renewal of the ANC … In the province we have done so much in the last two years led by our chair, comrade Panyaza [Lesufi, Gauteng premier].”
Nciza said another reason for the upswing in support was dissatisfaction with the dysfunctional multi-party coalitions which had tried to govern Gauteng’s three metros of Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni after the ANC lost control in local government elections.
“Do you think Gauteng can afford that as they hold 35% of the country’s GDP? I don’t think that is possible but also they have seen that the ANC, [even] with its mistakes, has done so much and, [with] what has happened in the last few years, progress has stopped,” he said.
“Service delivery stopped because they trusted people who have never been in government because they speak well …,” he added, saying the attitude of the people in Soweto towards the ANC had changed.
He said the party was confident that, unlike in previous elections, residents of Soweto — home to a considerable number of its supporters — would go to the 29 May polls to vote for the ANC in great numbers.
“They know the development that has happened in that township in the last year. So, we are very confident and we are happy,” he said.
Denying that the party’s internal research had previously pointed to a decline in support, Nciza said it was now pointing to an upward swing.
“What I know is that we are going up every day. We are doing weekly research and we are able to see that a lot of people are now saying, ‘We will vote for the ANC,’” he said.
The research showed that at least 30% of voters were undecided. The party planned to target them in the last week before the elections.
The ANC’s national leaders have previously expressed concern over Tshwane, with its electoral head Mdumiseni Ntuli deploying party veterans and President Cyril Ramaphosa to campaign aggressively in an attempt to regain support in the metro.
Veterans including former deputy president David Mabuza and ex-presidents Kgalema Motlanthe and Thabo Mbeki have campaigned in Tshwane as part of the ANC’s last push.
Gauteng provincial secretary TK Nciza on the campaign trail in Soweto this month. (Photo by Gallo Images/Sharon Seretlo)
Nciza’s deputy Tasneem Motara said that any party that didn’t defend its base would be doing itself a disservice, adding that the ANC’s research showed that voters were particularly angry over the country’s electricity problems.
She said the Gauteng leadership had found that the electricity crisis in townships was not due to load-shedding, but a lack of transformers.
“That is exactly why we put funding as provincial government; we got into a legal agreement with City Power to intervene in those communities to replace transformers,” Motara said.
“Some of those communities had no electricity for three years [and] even five years.
“Understanding your community’s needs and understanding that, using both the fiscus or money that we have available and the legal framework, we can intervene because the provincial government’s responsibility is not electricity.
“We have found a way to address that. We work with Eskom, we work with City Power but also we work with communities. What this process has taught us is that the government cannot work in silos.”
Last year, the ANC’s internal research suggested it would dip below 50% and land at around 45%, party insiders told the M&G. This was partly due to the government’s failure to address the crime, unemployment and electricity problems, alienating its historical support base in the province.
In October, the M&G reported that, at an NEC meeting, Lesufi had called out Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan for failing to provide transformers in ANC strongholds to address the electricity crisis.
As the party stared at the prospect of losing this year’s elections, the matter was immediately given priority by the ANC, with Ramaphosa announcing that the NEC had advised Gordhan to urgently attend to the overloading and sabotage of transformers in townships.
The ANC in Gauteng has suffered from collateral damage from the national government’s mismanagement.
The interventions on electricity, the dysfunctional coalitions and Lesufi’s programme to revive impoverished communities through the Nasi Ispani jobs initiative are all expected to boost the ANC’s performance in Gauteng on 29 May, one party leader said.
The ANC is targeting more than 11 million voters nationally and aiming to equal its 2019 electoral outcome of 57%. This would be done with a 70% voter turnout, elections head Ntuli said in a leaked recording of an NEC meeting last month.
He said in the last weeks of campaigning, the ANC would focus on its base and those disgruntled supporters who had opted not to vote, rather than voting for another party.
The party would also focus on attracting first-time voters while improving its election machinery in the Western Cape, Northern Cape and the North West.
Ntuli said the ANC would also need to ensure it increased its electoral margins in its strongest provinces of Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga to get 80% of the vote.
Meanwhile, the M&G reported last week that, in eThekwini, the ANC was aiming at mining high-density voter districts in a bid to shore up its support in the metro, where it hopes to gather 1.5 million votes.
The ANC knows winning the KwaZulu-Natal metro is the key to taking the province — about 40% of the total vote is located there — and to retaining its overall majority. It has calculated that 50% in eThekwini will translate into almost 15% when national ballots are counted.
KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng account for the lion’s share of the ANC’s voters.
A Paternoster Group study indicated that, in 2021, the ruling party received 5.25 million votes, over 2 million of them coming from the two provinces. This translates to 37.7% of the ANC’s national vote.
In 2019, the ANC received a little over 10 million votes, of which 4.44 million came from Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the equivalent of 44.3% of the voter share.
The ANC’s drop in those two provinces between 2019 and 2021 alone was significant and caused it to get a mere 45% of the national vote in the 2021 local government elections.