Durban — Having overseen the country’s descent into a deep socio-economic pit, with still-too-high fuel prices, an electricity grid hanging on by the skin of its teeth (despite what the Eskom top brass say), high poverty levels, unemployment rates vying for worst in the world and generally failing infrastructure, the ANC has only itself to blame for the blow it suffered in this week’s election.
While it appeared on Friday that the party would fall disastrously short of the heady 70% support it enjoyed 20 years ago, worse was to follow with the knowledge that it could also lose the economic centres of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
It was Jacob Zuma who confidently predicted that the ANC would rule until Jesus returns; how ironic it is, therefore, that it is Zuma who has contributed to the ANC’s fall from grace and whose party appeared poised on Friday to take KZN.
While the ANC will still have the most seats in Parliament, it no longer has the might to push through legislation and other decisions alone with nary a thought for the objections of the opposition.
Now we enter the era of coalition politics, and with Zuma’s MK party having declared it will not work with the ANC, attention turns to the DA – which has declared willingness to form a coalition government – and the EFF.
It is imperative that the horsetrading is concluded as soon as possible, both to calm the markets and to reassure a populace, which has evidently voted for change, that things will indeed change.
A deal with the pro-nationalisation EFF could scare markets, while one with the DA could attract investors.
While it cannot be denied that the ANC made huge strides in addressing the inequalities wrought by apartheid on the black populace, its descent into factions and the rapacious greed and corruption of too many of its members has all but ensured that it goes the way of so many failed African liberation movements before it.
Independent on Saturday