POLITRICKING | ‘Correcting mistakes’ and putting SA on a ‘higher pedestal’ – Mdumiseni Ntuli on the ANC’s road to elections

JOHANNESBURG - Despite the African National Congress’ (ANC) long list of challenges and failures at the helm of the country, the governing party’s head of elections, Mdumiseni Ntuli, says it remains “better placed to navigate these stormy waters with the people of this country, across the difficulties that we have.”

He believes when it comes to the objective reality of the country, the ANC, through its policies and leadership, has delivered a layer of the population that could not have been imagined 30 years ago when the country took over the reins from the apartheid era government.

Ntuli is this week’s guest on Politricking with Tshidi Madia, an Eyewitness News politics podcast.

In it, the ANC national executive committee member discussed the role of the incumbent as a path finder, and being on the campaign trail in what has been largely described as the ANC’s most difficult elections since the dawn of democracy.

He also shared his thoughts on where his organisation possibly lost the plot, and the efforts required to return to its old values, while rooting out careerisms, and facing off with a former leader who has since become a political opponent in the form of two-time ANC president Jacob Zuma, who, while refusing to officially resign from the governing party, is currently campaigning against it via the uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK) Party.

The party launched last year, using the former liberation movement’s armed wing’s name, and using symbols similar to those of Umkhonto WeSizwe.

“It is inevitable that in such a journey of complex transformation, you are bound to have detours and challenges along the way. And I think we have a better place as the ANC today to understand where we made mistakes, and how to go about correcting those mistakes, to place our country at a higher pedestal again.”

Ntuli spoke of forces that did not want to see a black government doing well, arguing they would have not simply walked away from this desire because of the 1994 democratic breakthrough.

His claim is they remain in the country, some having infiltrated the very same ANC, and have now become quite emboldened as the ANC grows weaker in support at the polls.

“These forces are no longer able to hold themselves back because of the level of desperation, and they want to leverage on both the subjective and objective conditions of our people in order to achieve that objective that they had set themselves long before 1994,” he says.

He cited comments made by Pick n Pay CEO Sean Summers, who said the current leadership in the country was a crime against humanity. Ntuli said this was an ideological position, not just based on recent scandals of government over the past few years.

“If anything, the people who have been disaffected by mistakes and poor leadership exercise over the past few years in the country are still the black majority that were liberated through the leadership of the same organisation. The whites are still more or less in the same position as they were, or even better,” he said.

“But for that man to stand up and say, this is a crime against humanity. That is accompanied by obviously, in the near future, this is going to be seen [in] financial investment, which is going to be directed to other political parties in order to dislodge the African National Congress,” added Ntuli.

He made a case that some of the new parties were simply projects aimed at dividing the African voters while conceding to the fact that the ANC has played a substantial role in its own downward trajectory at the polls.

The ANC head of elections is clear in his disdain for coalitions, going as far as to say his organisation despised them.

“We are vehemently opposed to the idea of coalitions; not arrogance or being self-centred, our lived experience as the ANC and as South Africans in general is that coalitions have not worked in our country,” he said.

Ntuli said this was also the message the ANC was taking on their campaign. He said the party was only interested in navigating these in the different municipalities, to try to understand what best suits the ANC and its constituencies.

As it stands, the ANC recently reconfigured its coalition in Ekurhuleni, finally getting its hands on the mayoral chain for the first time since losing power in 2021.

Its regional convenor, Doctor Xhakaza, was elected mayor unopposed last week.

He is leading a multi-party executive, which includes the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).