SummaryOpen the quick read
- Eastern Cape ANC chairperson Oscar Mabuyane admitted the party emerged from municipal elections 'bruised and bleeding' after historic losses.
- Voter turnout was critically low, with over two million registered voters staying away across the Eastern Cape, signalling widespread public dissatisfaction.
- The ANC lost its outright majority in Buffalo City Metro for the first time since 1994, forcing negotiations with rival parties to govern.
- Mabuyane called for strict meritocracy over factional loyalty when appointing executive mayors, speakers, and chief whips.
- The party plans to rectify candidate lists legally after initial council sittings to restore several popular leaders who were excluded.
ASANDA NINI
The recent municipal elections have left the ANC in the Eastern Cape "bruised and bleeding".
This is according to the party's provincial chairperson, Oscar Mabuyane, while delivering his political overview at the extended ANC provincial executive committee meeting in KuGompo City on Sunday.
As a result, Mabuyane urged party membership to ensure that going to the 2029 national and provincial elections, they should make sure that they "listen" to what voters had communicated through the ballot in the November 4 elections, or kiss state power goodbye.
Mabuyane told the meeting, also attended by the party's national executive committee members and alliance partners, that the electorate has spoken.
"The people have spoken. Our responsibility now is to demonstrate that we have listened," he said.
This was the ANC's first provincial leadership meeting since the municipal elections.
The party lost outright majority in a number of provincial municipalities they historically enjoyed stronghold status in, while its electoral support dwindled drastically, with Mabuyane also blaming the poor showing on voter apathy and low turnout on election day.
"Comrades, allow me to sketch a political overview of the situation confronting our organisation following the local government elections.
"We must begin by acknowledging, without equivocation, that the ANC has emerged from these elections bruised and bleeding.
"Across the country, the electoral outcome has exposed the extent to which our organisation has suffered a decline in electoral support.
"The emergence of hung municipalities, including municipalities that have historically constituted strongholds of the ANC, is a clear manifestation of this political reality," he said.
Mabuyane said party members must resist the temptation to explain away the outcome with convenient political arguments and instead "listen carefully to what the people are communicating through the ballot box".
"Throughout the election campaign, we did our level best to mobilise communities to participate in the democratic process.
"Our structures traversed the length and breadth of this province, engaging communities and encouraging our people to exercise their democratic rights. Yet, despite these efforts, voter participation remained disappointingly low.
"In the Eastern Cape, around 1.7 million people are reported to have participated in these elections. We must be concerned and try to find answers [as to why] more than two million registered voters didn’t cast their votes.
"What cannot be disputed is that voter disengagement or apathy has become one of the most serious political challenges confronting our organisation," Mabuyane said, adding however that "their absence cannot simply be dismissed as political apathy".
In many instances, it reflects disappointment, frustration and a growing distance between the ANC and the communities it was established to serve," he said.
Mabuyane said the situation in Buffalo City Metro, where the party lost outright majority "is particularly instructive".
The party in BCM came below 50% for the first time since the democratic dispensation of 1994, achieving 41.93% of the vote, shedding some wards and forfeiting a substantive number of proportional representative seats in the 100-member council.
The ANC now needs to convince other political parties to team up with them if it wants to retain power.
Mabuyane said the situation in BCM requires serious reflection.
"Comrades, who among us would have imagined that Buffalo City, with its rich revolutionary history and longstanding electoral support for the ANC, would find itself in a position where the formation of a municipal government requires negotiations with other political parties?
"This is a political development that demands serious reflection," Mabuyane said, adding that the ANC cannot wish away the electoral verdict but must respond to it with political maturity, organisational discipline and strategic clarity.
"We now find ourselves in circumstances where we may have to engage political opponents with whom we have fundamental ideological and political differences.
"Any arrangements entered into must be guided by the interests of the people, the stability of municipal governance and the broader objectives of social transformation," he said.
While the ANC said its immediate responsibility will now be to ensure the orderly constitution of municipal councils this week and the establishment of functional municipal administrations, it felt that the highest degree of meritocracy should be the order of the day, as municipal political leadership is appointed.
"In determining who occupies the positions of executive mayor, speaker and chief whip, we must exercise the highest degree of meritocracy and conscious political judgement.
"We must strike a dialectical balance between continuity and discontinuity.
"Continuity must be justified by demonstrated performance, while discontinuity must be informed by the necessity for renewal and improved governance.
"Those comrades who have distinguished themselves through effective leadership, administrative competence and an unwavering commitment to service delivery deserve serious consideration for retention.
"Equally, those whose tenures have been characterised by poor performance, administrative instability, political arrogance or a failure to respond to the needs of communities must make way for new leadership."
Mabuyane said the ANC "cannot reward failure" in the name of organisational continuity.
"Neither can we discard capable and experienced comrades merely because they do not belong to particular political groupings within our organisation.
"In making these decisions, there must be no holy cows.
"Factional considerations, personal loyalties and political patronage must find no accommodation in this process.
"Best amongst us must be deployed, especially those who have proven their capabilities and demonstrated the requisite skills.
"Our people have already passed judgement on the performance of municipalities. They know which deployees provided leadership and which ones failed.
"They know which ANC public representatives remained accessible and which ones disappeared from their communities after being elected.
"They know which municipalities delivered services and which ones became synonymous with administrative paralysis and political instability.
"We must respect the intelligence and judgement of our people. The comrades we deploy must therefore possess political integrity, administrative competence, humility and a genuine commitment to public service," he said.
Municipal leadership, Mabuyane said, must never be treated as an entitlement or a reward for factional allegiance.
"It is a responsibility entrusted to us by the people," he said.
With the amendment of party lists of candidates allowed by law after the inaugural council meetings, the party plans to re-register a number of their municipal leaders across the province who found themselves excluded from the lists submitted to the IEC before elections, despite them being popular in their areas.
Mayors such as Alfred Nzo district's Tsileng Sobuthongo and Dr AB Xuma's Siyabulela Zangqa were among those whose names were left off.
Regional party leaders and mayoral candidates in some councils also found their names missing from the lists, despite the party having ordered that they be included.
Mabuyane said this would be rectified.
"We must also ensure that comrades who were removed from the candidate lists at the registration stage are not abandoned, and those who qualify for strategic deployment are considered as our lists can be replenished soon after the first council meetings.
"The organisation must pursue their return to the lists, through every lawful process available.
"We must manage the constitution of councils in accordance with the law while those processes are concluded, and their suitability must be considered in the deployment process, subject to the outcome of the legal process and the applicable rules," said Mabuyane.