You assume they think that far
ANC are absolute retards when it comes to running the country and basic governance.
However they do understand power dynamic in politics well, and know how to play the game. They know how to pick a popular person to be the face of the party. They did it with Zuma (who ended up being a disaster), and again with Ramaphosa.
Ntuli said the party was expecting another internal poll by the end of the month as an indicator of whether Ramaphosa remained the most popular figure in politics. He said the previous poll — which the
M&G understands to have been presented to the national executive committee (NEC) late last year — indicated that Ramaphosa was more popular than the ANC.
“If you look at the polls that have gone on, which we’ve seen throughout the year, and last year, the president was polling slightly above the ANC as an organisation. I don’t know what will be the situation in the poll we are expecting now,” Ntuli said.
...
In 2019, Ntuli’s predecessor Fikile Mbalula admitted that the ANC used Ramaphosa’s popularity to regain its majority, albeit marginally. Mbalula said the ruling party would have received 40% of the vote in that year’s national election, had Ramaphosa not won the party’s Nasrec leadership election against Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in 2017
https://mg.co.za/politics/2024-02-1...ored 68% from ANC,and 33% from EFF supporters.
Sure, they could toss Ramaphosa under the bus and get in a leader who will dish out cabinet positions to MK and the EFF. Except the next election will be absolute kittens for them. Not only is the Demographic shift really working against them (old people in rural areas who see them as a liberation party are dying off), they would lose the last remaining popularity in urban areas with the younger vote.
Prudent leadership for the ANC would be to recognise the writing is on the wall for being a single party of government. The electoral system in SA effectively incentivises the destruction of large political parties.
I am going on what Frans Cronje is going off, and he recons the most stable coalition in South Africa will be middle class which is the DA's turf, and the aspirant middle class on the urban fringe (Basically people who want to work hard to get into the middle class, instead of stealing their way in) , which is the ANC's main base. This is a separate demographic from the communists and race nationalists like MK and EFF who want to destroy the middle class to make them equal with the poor.
Dropping policies like BEE and affirmative action has zero impact in this aspirant middle class demographic because they want to get into the middle class by their own efforts. Ditto for land expropriation and NHI.
Getting to that point will be difficult as the ANC will need to purge the race nationalists and communists from the party before it will be able to work well with the DA. Nevertheless, there are plenty of baby steps that can be taken before getting to that point.
https://irr.org.za/media/confidence-and-supply-as-an-alternative-to-a-da-anc-coalition-news24
A basic confidence and supply arrangement, that simply just has a more balanced budget as a concession for the DA, is a very easy, low hanging piece of fruit for the ANC to adopt. No need to have petty cabinet squabbles and horse trading.
