African National Congress (ANC) Chief Whip Mdumiseni Ntuli claims that one of the reasons the party lost its majority status in the 2024 general elections was because South Africa was unable to integrate the vast majority of its population into the economy.
In an interview on Newzroom Afrika, Ntuli emphasized the difficulties the party has been navigating.
Ntuli said: “The condition we find ourselves in today were not of our own making. We had various protected engagements with political parties including the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and uMkhonto weSizwe PARTY (MKP), but failed to reach consensus on key issues.”
Ntuli said both the EFF and MKP proposed exclusive coalitions with the ANC, insisting that the party disregard other potential partners.
However, there were significant objections. The MKP, for instance , rejected the idea of President Cyril Ramaphosa as a candidate in any grand coalition Ntuli said.
Furthermore, Ntuli recounted that the EFF and the Democratic Alliance (DA) were candid in their assessment , suggesting the ANC was a ‘’dying party’’ and implying that their future would be limited.
Ntuli said the three fundamental issues they grappled with in the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Lekgotla was the decline in membership and leadership quality, economic failures, and the state of governance.
“There is something radically wrong with the state of the ANC, both in terms of quality of membership and leadership.”
Secondly, Ntuli said the ANC has struggled with effective strategic leadership particularly in local and provincial governments, which has resulted also in the failure of the economy to absorb as many South Africans as possible particularly the youth, which has led to a negative performance of the ANC.
In addition, Ntuli said the effectiveness of local governments in providing basic services has come under scrutiny. He said this was increasingly seen as a critical issue in the contestation of the 2024 general elections.
Moreover, Ntuli also highlighted a troubling trend from both internal and external research that was done.
“Our own research and external research was a very disturbing pattern where the levels of confidence of population towards the ANC-led national and provincial government was almost converging with the same level of confidence that the population has on local government.
“This was happening for the first time, we have never had to deal with that situation,” Ntuli said.
Ntuli said historically higher confidence in the national and provincial governments has bolstered the party’s success in the local and provincial elections.
“What has made it possible and historically for the party to use its influence in the leadership role in the provincial and local government elections and succeed, was the perception in the view of the people, the spheres above local government was much higher rated, much more positive and more confidence.
‘“We didn’t enjoy this in these elections from where we come from,“ he said.
-IOL
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