On a hot Saturday afternoon on the hustings in Thabong, Welkom, ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe was approached by a visibly disgruntled 85-year-old woman.
Local ANC leaders had carefully selected houses and families Motlanthe would visit on his door-to-door campaign in the Free State, but Sarah Morake broke all the protocol. She demanded to know why months after ANC president Jacob Zuma assured her she would get a house, nothing had happened.
Pointing at Matjhabeng mayor Mathabo Leeto, she complained that she has no ”drums” — an apparent reference to the rubbish containers the council gives residents. ”All I want is my bedkamer, a bedkamer for my children, a sitkamer and an eetkamer,” she said, addressing Motlanthe in Sesotho.
But then she said: ”The ANC is my organisation and I will die for this party, though I don’t even have a T-shirt.”
That statement lies at the heart of this election. As with many others, Morake is angry about government services and the leaders who are failing to provide them — but that does not affect their undying devotion to the ANC as a movement.
Thabong is a poor township, but it was flooded with ANC posters, small flags and pamphlets. The school hall where Motlanthe later addressed supporters was packed to the rafters.
He then moved to nearby Maokeng, Kroonstad, in a campaign by ANC leaders in almost every township clearly aimed at retaining the ruling party’s two-thirds majority.
On Sunday the ANC played a trump card when it produced Nelson Mandela in Idutywa, the home town of Thabo Mbeki’s mother, Epainette, who has pledged support for the Congress of the People.
Other than the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape is the province where the ANC feels Cope most threatens it. Mandela’s presence and message of support were intended to counter speculation that the old man has reservations about Zuma’s leadership of the party.
Cope leaders constantly declare that Zuma’s ANC is not the ANC of Mandela, Luthuli and Tambo, saying they would not have tolerated leadership tainted by graft allegations.
But Cope was completely invisible in the Free State at the weekend. The ANC is moving to close every loophole, organising musicians, actors, celebrities, black professionals and business people to publicly embrace it.
Whether this translates into a two-thirds or three-thirds majority, to quote party secretary general Gwede Mantashe, remains to be seen.
But the ANC is clearly on an all-out offensive to counter predictions of a reduced majority for the first time since 1994.