Electing to Electrify: The ANC national conference and the roots of power crisis

South Africa’s news headlines centre on the internal dynamics of the ANC with specific reference to President Cyril Ramaphosa, who escaped impeachment proceedings as a result of the Phala Phala scandal. Indeed, at least $580,000 of undisclosed cash was hidden in a couch at his rural farm in Limpopo, raising questions about his role in violating the public trust and the rule of law. But the dominant analysis of the former liberation party in mainstream media publications obscures its longer-term and systemic public betrayals of the Black working class.

As the country moves closer to the 2024 elections, our research highlights the ANC and Ramaphosa’s complicity with what we term Energy Racism which is the unequal distribution of the burden of the South African energy crisis that is structured by apartheid geography and is suffered along race, class and gender dimensions. Our research with more than 40 residents in Soweto, suggests that black working-class communities simultaneously pay more for their supply of electricity and are more likely to be cut off for extended periods due to the ‘load reduction’ programme and slow response to technical problems by Eskom.

Our latest publication, Electing to Electrify: Unpacking the Local Crisis and State Response in Sun Valley, Soweto indicates that for 14 months i.e., from August 2020 to October 2021, due to a broken electricity transformer, residents of Sun Valley in Pimville, Soweto, suffered in the dark, often with no means to heat their homes or cook food. After initiating a range of fruitless meetings, including no-shows by relevant authorities, it appeared to residents as if neither the ruling ANC government nor officials of Eskom, would provide relief.  Residents occupied voter stations to prevent registration. On the cusp of a massive decline in voter turnout for the ANC, especially in Soweto, the party risked losing Ward 22 (where Sun Valley is located).

Ramaphosa told Sowetans that “this thing of ‘no electricity, no vote’ needs to stop now. If you don’t vote for the ANC, then electricity may never be restored... Which other party do you trust to ensure that electricity is restored here?” Four days prior to the local government elections on 1 November 2021, as if with a flick of the switch, new transformers were delivered, and residents’ lights were back on.  Like the former apartheid government, state concessions to the Black working class under the ANC are arguably underpinned by a paternalistic relationship.

They remain a mechanism through which to ‘manage’ race and class relations and to keep people in the townships, informal settlements, and villages from revolting. Instead of the Black working class being provided energy as a human right which belongs to them, it is a commodified service offered in exchange for votes. This, we suggest, reflects an important component of Energy Racism: when Black people specifically are denied access to basic services until they are useful to those in power.  In 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected as the first Black president of the country, the much-touted Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as developed by the ANC brought hope that the new government would undertake a state-driven, nationwide, redistributive welfare approach to swiftly address the legacy of apartheid.

Notwithstanding the major gains made in sanitation and electrification, as well as the delivery of free RDP housing, houses were often poorly constructed and the socio-spatial geography of apartheid (which stranded Black people in poorly serviced ghettos with under-funded schools, weak health care facilities and low paying jobs in the faraway cities) arguably became even more deeply entrenched. The ANC policy effectively shifted from the RDP to a market-oriented policy called Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) which has since 1996 reinforced poverty and inequality.

These policies mean that if you can’t afford to buy electricity then you can’t get it. Of course, those who cannot afford are more likely to be living in geographical areas that reflect the living legacy of racism and apartheid. The upcoming elections will mark 30 years of ANC rule and are a threat to the parliamentary majority the party has enjoyed since it took power in 1994. As the ANC goes to its national conference in December 2022, it is likely that the threat of losing votes alongside the disruption of bourgeois democracy through protest, occupations and boycotts will, as it did previously in Sun Valley in the lead up to the local government elections, have a strong influence in how this political party and national liberation movement organizes itself in preparation for the 2024 national election.

The ANC’s electoral vulnerability may open a window of opportunity for the working class to organise, mobilise and win important concessions. No political party that seeks to embed itself within the existing system of racial capitalism, the guarantee of Energy Racism, will solve the social and economic crisis that is currently besetting South Africa.

• Luke Sinwell is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Project Coordinator at the Centre for Sociological Research and Practice (CSRP), UJ.

• Trevor Ngwane is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Director at the CSRP, UJ.

• Terri Maggott is a researcher at the CSRP, UJ.