GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The ANC doesn’t realise it's an opposition party
‘Are ANC leaders incapable of learning the most basic democratic lessons, rammed home election after election?’
In a Financial Mail column last week, I set out the ANC’s dire record as an opposition party, focusing primarily on its performance in Cape Town, and then arguing that the same pattern seems set to be repeated in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay. The reason, I argued, was the ANC does not conceive of itself as a modern political party, but rather as a revolutionary or liberation movement ordained by God and predetermined to govern until the End of Days. Thus, it appears incapable not just of mastering but even of learning how to behave and function in opposition. The party’s political DNA just doesn’t cater for it. As a result, where the party is in opposition the position of the governing party is consolidated and the ANC’s percentage of the vote implodes. Cape Town makes the case: The ANC has now been in opposition in that city for a decade. During that time its percentage of the vote has dropped from 38.7% in 2006 to 24.5% in 2016; while the gap between it and the DA ...
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