Gauteng not seduced by slogans

Gauteng should have been the African National Congress’s (ANC) most secure stronghold. It is South Africa’s economic engine, home to the largest concentration of urban voters, capital markets, industry and skills. 

For decades, the province underpinned the ANC’s national dominance and projected the image of an unstoppable liberation movement transitioning smoothly into a governing party. 

Instead, Gauteng has become the ANC’s most unforgiving mirror: a province that has steadily and, now decisively, withdrawn its consent to be governed by spectacle rather than substance.

The numbers tell a stark and unambiguous story. In the 2009 provincial election, the ANC commanded 64.04% of the Gauteng vote. By 2014, that support had dropped to 53.59%, a 10.45 percentage point decline. In 2019, it slid to just above 50%, a further 3.4 percentage point drop. By 2024, the party collapsed to 34.76%, a staggering 15.43 percentage point decline. 

This is not gradual electoral drift. It is a structured rejection. And it is not random. The steepest declines align closely with specific leadership eras and governing styles that prioritised political theatre, personality and performative politics over institutional competence and delivery.

Tracing Gauteng’s trajectory from its first premier, Tokyo Sexwale, to the current administration under Panyaza Lesufi, a clear pattern emerges. 

While electoral decline has been long-term and cumulative, the sharpest and most damaging voter losses occurred under the premierships of Nomvula Mokonyane and Lesufi. Between them, they presided over the two largest single-period declines in ANC support in the province’s democratic history.

Mokonyane inherited Gauteng at the absolute height of ANC dominance in 2009. The party was electorally unchallenged, organisationally confident and politically entrenched.

Five years later, she left the province materially weakened. ANC support fell from 64.04% to 53.59%, a staggering 10.45 percentage point decline in a single term. That drop alone should have triggered deep introspection within the party. Instead, it was largely explained away.

The self-proclaimed “Mama Action” earned her reputation through spectacle rather than substance. Her tenure was a masterclass in announcements, public insults and headline-grabbing interventions that rarely survived beyond the press release. 

Township revitalisation projects were rolled out with great fanfare, only to stall and quietly collapse. Economic initiatives were promised with bold rhetoric but failed to materialise at scale. Even the Alexandra Renewal Project, intended as a showcase of post-apartheid urban transformation, became shorthand for waste, opacity and unfulfilled promises. 

And her infamous “dirty votes” remarks reminded residents that contempt could travel faster than service delivery. Voters did not abandon the ANC because of ideology; they walked away because the reality of their daily lives persistently contradicted the official narrative.

What follows is particularly instructive. David Makhura’s premiership, spanning 2014 to 2022, coincided with a markedly different leadership style. The ANC continued to decline electorally but the pace of decline slowed significantly.

From 2014 to 2019, the party shed approximately 3.4 percentage points, hovering just above the critical 50% threshold. This stabilisation matters. It demonstrates that voter behaviour in Gauteng is neither reflexively anti-ANC nor permanently hostile. Rather, it is responsive to how power is exercised.

Makhura was neither flamboyant nor omnipresent and he made little effort to cultivate a mass personality or dominate headlines. His leadership leaned instead towards restraint, administrative discipline and respect for institutional process.

While his tenure was by no means without shortcomings, it projected seriousness, predictability and a measure of bureaucratic order at a time when public trust was already fraying. 

Voters did not respond with renewed enthusiasm or growth in support but they did respond with relative patience and a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt. In Gauteng’s political context, that restraint mattered.

The contrast with what followed could not have been starker. When Lesufi and his faction forced Makhura from office in 2022, Lesufi was presented as the antidote to restraint: energetic, omnipresent and theatrically engaged. Where Mokonyane governed through volume and proclamation, Lesufi escalated that model and refined it for the social media age. 

Governance became increasingly performative: livestreamed, hashtag-driven and staged for visibility rather than outcomes. Expectations rose sharply. Yet less than three years later, the outcome was devastating.

In 2024, the ANC suffered its worst electoral defeat in Gauteng’s democratic history, collapsing to 34.76%, a staggering 15.43 percentage point decline from 2019.

If Gauteng voters were seduced by volume, visibility or performative activism, this should have been a renaissance. Instead, it became an electoral rout.

This is why isolating the Mokonyane, Makhura and Lesufi eras matters. Together, they offer a controlled comparison of leadership styles within the same party, province and socio-economic environment. 

The electorate did not change dramatically between these periods. The material challenges remained broadly consistent. What shifted was how leadership was exercised, communicated and prioritised; and voters responded accordingly.

A clear pattern emerges when one examines Gauteng’s electorate closely. This is a province that consistently rewards calm, credible, governance-oriented leadership and punishes political theatre. Urban voters navigating the daily realities of transport breakdowns, potholes, water outages, electricity instability, crime and failing municipalities are not impressed by spectacle. They want systems that work.

This preference is visible not only at the provincial level but also in local government. Technocratic, administratively focused leaders, such as those associated with Action SA’s Dr Nasiphi Moya in Tshwane, have resonated precisely because they emphasise competence, process and service delivery over noise. In a low-trust environment, voters judge leaders not by the scale of inherited problems but by whether governance feels functional, predictable and grounded in reality.

Yet the ANC appears determined to misread this lesson. Instead of cultivating credible administrators and institutional stewards, it continues to elevate figures whose primary political skill lies in commanding attention. 

Gauteng is not a province seduced by slogans. It experiences policy failure in real time and responds accordingly at the ballot box.

Under Lesufi, governance increasingly became performance. Programmes were launched with cinematic flair: drones, sound systems, slogans and hashtags.

Administrative follow-through repeatedly faltered. Nasi iSpani, marketed as a transformative youth employment intervention, collapsed into unpaid stipends and short-term contracts. iCrush No Lova, a rebranded extension of the same approach, followed the same trajectory. 

Crime-fighting initiatives were announced with intensity. The department of community safety was centralised into the premier’s office and its budget doubled, yet residents experienced little relief as organised crime and syndicates entrenched themselves further, a reality now taking centre stage in the Madlanga commission and the work of parliament’s ad hoc committee.

In a province with nearly 45% youth unemployment, this form of governance is not merely ineffective; it is cruel. Each announcement raises expectations. Each failure deepens cynicism. And the ANC pays the price.

Compounding this is the corrosive symbolism of excess. The ANC once symbolised sacrifice; today, it increasingly symbolises indulgence.

As governance in Gauteng has deteriorated, the symbolism of excess linked to political networks has become impossible to ignore. Figures closely associated with Lesufi’s inner circle — including Lebo Maile, TK Nciza and Edwin Sodi — and the conspicuous lifestyles of their girlfriends, displayed on social media, embody a widening moral disconnect. 

Emirates first-class flights to Monaco and Switzerland, luxury shopping sprees, front-row seats at Beyoncé concerts and Formula One races: in a province drowning in unemployment and service delivery failures, these displays are not merely tasteless; they are politically radioactive.

In a province grappling with unemployment, failing infrastructure and economic anxiety, such imagery is devastating. 

It reinforces the perception that political power is no longer a tool for collective advancement but a gateway to private indulgence. The ANC once symbolised sacrifice and discipline. In Gauteng today, it increasingly symbolises entitlement.

As the party’s vote share collapsed, the province experienced sustained semigration, particularly towards the Western Cape, where the Democratic Alliance (DA) governs. 

Professionals, businesses and high-net-worth individuals relocated in growing numbers, drawn by predictable governance and functional service delivery. This is administrative migration: a rational response to institutional failure.

The lesson from Gauteng is neither subtle nor complex. Voters are not rejecting the ANC because they crave opposition politics. 

They are rejecting a governing style that mistakes noise for connection, visibility for legitimacy and performance for policy.

Mokonyane’s era should have served as a warning. Makhura’s tenure demonstrated an alternative worth strengthening. Lesufi’s premiership has confirmed the cost of ignoring that lesson.

Gauteng has become the place where ANC slogans go to die. Until the party aligns its leadership choices with the province’s clear preferences — competence over charisma, governance over grandstanding — the decline will continue.

The voters have already delivered their verdict. The ANC simply does not listen.

Muzi Zulu is a citizen and activist in Gauteng