Pipe dream that opposition will unseat us in 2024 elections, says ANC KZN

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal says opposition parties will not have enough support to unseat it as the governing party in the province, despite declining showings in recent elections.

The party’s performance at the polls has been deteriorating in general and local government elections for almost a decade, with a particularly strong dip in the 2021 local government elections.

Speaking in Durban on Tuesday to mark a year since the current ANC leadership took office, provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo acknowledged that, at face value, the recent analysis made for grim reading.

However, Mtolo pointed out that the analysis was ignoring “objective factors”, especially when looking at the party's 2021 local government elections decline.

“Among the objective factors is that it was a Monday after a long weekend and it was under Covid-19 regulations where people were literally scared to walk willy-nilly at that time,” he said.

Those factors contributed to a low voter turnout that affected the ruling party the most, he said.

“Since the ANC is a huge party, it happened to lose many voters who did not go to voting stations, as happens with voting patterns when there is a low turnout.”

Mtolo said opposition parties who dream of unseating the ruling party in the province, based on the same 2021 results, face an “impossible” task.

“To unseat the ANC in KZN, the two biggest opposition parties would need an extra 1-million votes combined. They would need a 100% increase and there is no way you can have a 100% increase in the election.”

The ANC managed to garner 41.4% of the provincial vote in 2021, which was bigger than that of the resurgent IFP (24.3%) and the DA (12.9%) combined. Such results have given rise to coalition governance in hung municipalities in the province, including in eThekwini, with varying levels of success.

“There is a pipe dream that they think they will unseat the ANC. They will not. The ANC will keep them outside government and inaugurate a new premier in June 2024.”

Provincial chairperson Siboniso Duma said coalition governance had contributed to the collapse of service delivery at local government level. He said the KZN ANC supported the mother body’s initiative to develop a framework that guides coalitions in local government.

“We have seen a spectacular failure of coalitions in municipalities such as Tshwane, with coalition partners failing to pass budgets, resulting in the collapse of service delivery.

“We will do everything in our power as guided by national leadership to prevent the collapse of service delivery in such municipalities because it is ordinary people who suffer,” he said.

Duma reiterated the party’s stance that it would not need a coalition government in KZN after the 2024 general and provincial elections.

“While we support interventions to aid coalitions at local government level, we maintain the ANC will not need a coalition to govern after the 2024 elections. The national leadership agrees with us when we say we will campaign for a resounding victory in the 2024 elections. We want KZN to contribute significantly towards national numbers.”

Mtolo said they won’t disclose how they will go about winning the elections but did reveal they have some of the highest membership numbers for a province.

“The ANC membership has different categories – members in good standing, probation, in grace period – and if you collect all that in the province it is above 200,000.

“What we won’t do is tell our strategies on how to win elections and arm the enemy. That will be too dangerous for us.”

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