Johannesburg - The township of Tembisa on the East Rand is one of the perfect examples of how apartheid spatial planning continues to stifle development and exclude blacks from the mainstream economy.
Located in the Ekurhuleni Metro, it is home to many of the municipality’s more than 190 informal settlements and some of the hostels that were sites of political violence in the early 1990s.
While the township has since 1994 seen the development of, among others, shopping malls, upgraded train stations and construction of roads, the rate of in-migration has often tended to overshadow this.
As in many South African townships, unemployment levels are high in a municipality the DA claims has lost more than 180 000 jobs in the past 12 months.
On his visit to this area two weeks ago to campaign for the ANC, President Jacob Zuma left it to Ekurhuleni mayoral candidate Mzwandile Masina to speak about service delivery issues and deliver election promises to residents.
Instead, Zuma tore into DA leader Mmusi Maimane and Julius Malema for most of his 20-minute address. This has been the hallmark of Zuma’s speeches everywhere he has gone in this campaign - he has gone on the offensive against Maimane and the DA, appealing to black South Africans to identify the DA as merely an extension of “our oppressors”.
While the DA has described his utterances as sowing racial divisions, it points more to what a difficult election this has been for the ANC, and how it has had to rethink its approach.
Two significant moves by the party in this election have shown how, under the pressure from opposition parties like the DA and increasing demands for political accountability from communities, the ANC has decided to announce mayoral candidates before the elections.
This is a departure from its age-old mantra that the party is the brand and that individuals are simply an extension of it. This decision by the party’s National General Council (NGC) last year was effectively a concession that it is no longer good enough to simply rally people behind the ANC and handing them a mayor to lead them after elections.
The party parachuted Danny Jordaan from Safa House in Joburg into the Eastern Cape to put out fires and try to retain Nelson Mandela Bay, a gamble which may still fail.
In contrast to the notion of putting the party forward, the accountability and public profile of individual leaders has been put in sharp focus because the terrain has changed.
The ANC’s national executive committee member and spokesman Zizi Kodwa, however, disagrees that the ANC has to do things differently.
“The ANC has a system, and we are able to say which areas of the system must improve.
“That’s why we introduce new elements in our strategies, like in the local government poll we have had to say let’s announce our mayoral candidates ahead of time’.
“It’s part of the lessons from the system, because the local government elections are about local issues and part of those are people being concerned about who is going to lead them. But nothing has forced us to change our strategy,” said Kodwa.
NEC member Fikile Mbalula said announcing mayors beforehand did not necessarily elevate politicians’ individual accountability. “On the issue of mayors, there’s never been emphasis on an individual, it has always been on the organisation. An individual is an embodiment of the infrastructure of the organisation, but the ANC remains the brand.”
The second thing that happened was that the party had to tailor its message in reaction to what the opposition was putting out. Previous election campaign have seen the ANC setting the campaign agenda, leaving the opposition to face criticism that they have nothing to offer expect objections to the ANC. But in this election campaign, the ANC has had to react to how the DA, for example, packaged its own message.
Zuma’s message about Maimane and the DA, according to Mbalula, was spurred by Maimane’s use of former ANC president Nelson Mandela in DA campaigns.
It appears the ANC has realised it can no longer campaign mostly on its service-delivery record, most of which is skewed as it’s the only party that has really governed except for the DA in the Western Cape and in some smaller municipalities.
This record is perhaps more of a risk than a boost for the ANC as 22 years after democracy basic services are still scarce in many communities. Nor can the party rely mostly on its role in the liberation struggle, as that space is now being contested as the likes of the DA tamper with the narrative.
ANC leaders will today speak about what a successful campaign it’s been, but they will certainly omit the fact that perhaps for the first time they have not had the monopoly on setting the campaign agenda.
The Sunday Independent