Going into the 2019 general election with Zuma at helm of the ruling party will be suicidal for the ANC, writes Xolela Mangcu.
Johannesburg - Let me start where I left off last week, which was that the ANC must lose before it gets better. However, the chances of the party learning from its dismal performance are slim, if its secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s Orwellian speak is anything to go by.
Mantashe maintained the party had actually done very well because it still controlled over 80 percent of the municipalities.
But obviously with responses such as Mantashe’s about how well the party has done, the chances of learning anything from this experience are limited.
For Mantashe to tell us the ANC has done well because it has won 80 percent of the municipalities is an exercise in desperate denial. What Mantashe omitted to tell us is the 20 percent they did not win is also where the country’s resources are concentrated - its major metropolitan areas.
What he also omitted to tell us is that the ANC has all but given up on ever winning Cape Town. Oh, he also forgot to mention the party lost in the president’s own home town.
The president lumped a R300 million boondoggle in the middle of their poverty, and the people of Nkandla are paying him back with their rejection.
To lose in the ANC’s heartland of Port Elizabeth is surely making the likes of Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba roll in their graves - just as they have been turning with each Jacob Zuma scandal.
And so instead of Mantashe’s self-serving snapshot, I suggest a longitudinal analysis of what seems like irreversible decline.
