Mashatile believes ANC will hold on to Gauteng

However, the pundits say the party is done in the province

ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile is confident the party in Gauteng will weather the storm and hold on to power in the 2024 elections despite naysayers.

Mashatile says that whoever emerges victorious at the ANC Gauteng provincial conference this weekend where two MECs, Panyaza Lesufi and Lebogang Maile, are contesting for chair, will arrest electoral decline.

Speaking through his spokesperson Keith Khoza, Mashatile broke his silence, saying he supported both Lesufi and Maile for the top post.

This as the provincial conference convened amid confusion with speculation that Mashatile preferred Maile to lead the party in the province.

“The treasurer-general has full confidence in both Panyaza and Lebogang. He believes it will be a positive thing for either of the two candidates to lead the party in the province,” Khoza said.

He said both Maile and Lesufi had political acumen and credibility and came up through the ANC structures under Mashatile’s mentorship as the leader in the province.

Analysts say neither of the two MECs, Panyaza Lesufi and Lebogang Maile, vying for the position of ANC provincial chairperson, can rescue the party.

A member of the ANC in Ekurhuleni applied for a court interdict to block the conference from going ahead yesterday. The outcome of the application was not known at the time of publication.

There were talks of attempts to reach a compromise deal that would see Lesufi elected chair and Maile his deputy. Both have publicly said that could save the ANC should they be elected. However, political analyst Ralph Mathekga disagrees.

“Gauteng is on a downward spiral, I don’t think anyone can save it, the problem is quite institutional and is quite systemic for the ANC,” said Mathekga.

He said that the ANC in Gauteng had survived this long because it controlled critical municipalities that gave it financial muscle.

But having lost three metros — Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane — the party is essentially over, he said.

“It has survived for a long time out of controlling resources but when you lose a city you no longer control resources and members are fighting for the remaining positions. They don’t see the reality that the party is receding from power,” Mathekga said.

“It’s a question of who can make the landing softer because the ANC is falling, it’s going to land one way or another. It’s just a matter of whether the landing is painful or soft.”

Prof Mcebisi Ndletyana agreed, saying the internal squabbles and the findings of the Zondo commission would make the ANC unpopular with voters no matter who was the face of the campaign.

“The ANC in Gauteng will not get an outright majority, that is quite certain, and it does not matter who leads the party in the province. We are now in 2022 so you basically have 2023 to mount a serious campaign before the 2024 elections but from now on you are likely to see a party at war with itself,” said Ndletyana.

“The exposure of the ANC generally from the Zondo report and the subsequent cases from it you are going to have are going to be more like a rerun of the Zondo commission which did not help the ANC’s PR. These cases will be a reminder of the deep-seated malfeasance within the party which will turn off voters come 2024.”

A senior party leader in the province told the Sunday Times that Lesufi was more popular than Maile and if the party could be saved it would be by him.

“There is no one person who can save the party, it has to be a collective. But between the two, I would say Panyaza is better positioned. I say that cautiously because you don’t want to present him as a messiah,” the source said.

For the first time since the advent of democracy in 1994, the party was expected to drop below 50% in the province in the 2024 general elections. This means to govern the province, the ANC will have to enter into coalitions.

However, depending on how far below 50% it drops, there is an opportunity for the opposition parties to put together their own coalition to oust the ANC.

This was seen in the three Gauteng metros after last year’s local government elections where a DA-led coalition kicked the ANC out of government in all three metros.

The ANC in the province experienced its biggest drop in support in elections held between 2009 and 2016. There were four elections in this period — two local government and two general.

The party in Gauteng dropped from 64% support in the 2009 general elections to 53.59% in 2014. It dropped from 60% in the 2011 local government elections to 46% in 2016.

This trend continued in the next elections where the party went from the 46% in 2016 to an embarrassing 36% in last year’s local government elections.

The drop in 2019 was not as drastic, taking the party from 53.59% in 2014 to 50.19%.

The aggrieved ANC member who took the party to court, Jabulani Sithole, said the conference could not continue without resolving the 19 quarantined votes from the Ekurhuleni conference. He said that by failing to resolve the matter, the provincial executive committee (PEC) had failed in its duties.

This is after the ANC Gauteng PEC meeting failed to make a decision as delegated by a special national executive committee meeting that ended in the early hours of yesterday.

The PEC decided that the disputed branches could participate in the conference but their votes would also be quarantined.

The structure that would be elected in the provincial conference would deal with the matter after the gathering.