South Africa's ANC losing ground ahead of polls

The African National Congress Party (ANC), which has ruled South Africa since the end of the apartheid era in 1994, is increasingly losing supporters due to its inability to deliver services to the public and inter-party infighting, political analysts believe. "Many South Africans are disappointed with the ANC because of poor service delivery and failure to deliver on the promises they made in 1994," political analyst Ralph Mathekga told Anadolu Agency in a telephone interview. Mathekga cites recent increases in public strikes, an indication, he believes, that the ruling party is failing to deliver essential services to the people. Ayanda Kota, chairperson of the Unemployed People's Movement, agrees. "During the struggle against apartheid, ANC leaders promised South Africans free housing, education and jobs," he told AA. "But once they took power, they forgot about the people." Kota said black South Africans might have attained freedom, but most of them remain unemployed and continue to live in tinned houses lacking proper sanitation. Mathekga, founder of a local research think-tank, predicted that the ruling ANC would lose some of its traditional black voting base ahead of the April 2014 elections because most of them feel let down by the party. Since 1994, the ANC has been the governing party of post-apartheid South Africa. It clinched 65.9 percent of the votes in 2009 parliamentary elections, a slight decrease from the 69.7 percent it won four years earlier. In recent years, the ANC – once led by South Africa's iconic leader Nelson Mandela – has been tainted by allegations of corruption and abuse of office. The most prominent corruption case involving the ruling party relates to a series of bribes allegedly paid to companies involved in the ongoing R55-billion arms deal saga. A local newspaper recently accused mining company Gold Fields of bribing ANC National Chairperson Baleka Mbete with a R25-million stake in the company. The ANC has vehemently denied the accusations and has demanded a retraction of the story, along with a formal apology. "We stand by our story, which was clearly in the public interest," Stefaans Brummer, one of the report's authors and managing partner of the Mail & Guardian Center for Investigative Journalism, told AA. - Defections Professor Andre Duvenhage of Northwest University, for his part, blames the ANC'S declining support on party defections. "Due to infighting within the ruling party, we see former ANC members starting new political parties like the EFF, which is led by Julius Malema, the expelled former ANC Youth League president," he told AA in a telephone interview. Duvenhage recalled that in 2008 other former senior ANC members formed the Congress of the People (Cope) party, which took votes from the ANC in elections. "I don't think the ANC will get a two-thirds majority," the expert said. "The party has been losing most of the by-elections, conducted last year and this year, to the opposition." Financial services group Nomura has published a survey anticipating that the ANC vote share could drop from 65.9 percent to 56.2 percent in next year's poll. Nomura's emerging market analyst Peter Attard Montalto attributed the drop of almost 10 percentage points to voters moving to the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party, along with the newly-formed Agang and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) parties. "In the upcoming election, the electorate is expected to reflect its increasing dissatisfaction with delivery levels from the ruling party when it goes to the polls," Montalto said in a press release. When contacted for comment, ANC National Spokesman Jackson Mthembu said his party remained the most popular in South Africa, predicting that it would win next year's elections. "Political analysts and researchers are free to make their predictions, but the reality on the ground is that the ANC is the most popular party," he told AA.