It is a mistake by ANC leaders to claim that if the ANC collapses, South Africa will follow suit and become ungovernable, experts say. Instead, the ruling party must lose power whether it likes it or not, and the country will not go bankrupt unless the ANC itself deliberately makes it ungovernable to frustrate another government in charge. They unanimously claim that the ANC’s power would end, but the SA would continue to function under another party or a coalition of parties. “Ultimately, the whole thing just means the ANC is going out of power and it’s…
It is a mistake by ANC leaders to claim that if the ANC collapses, South Africa will follow suit and become ungovernable, experts say.
Instead, the ruling party must lose power whether it likes it or not, and the country will not go bankrupt unless the ANC itself deliberately makes it ungovernable to frustrate another government in charge.
They unanimously claim that the ANC’s power would end, but the SA would continue to function under another party or a coalition of parties.
“Ultimately, all of this just means the ANC is going out of power and this isn’t the end of South Africa, but maybe the end of the ANC,” said political analyst Dr Ralph Mathekga.
Another analyst, Dr. Ntsikelelo Breakfast, of the department of history and political studies at Nelson Mandela University, had a similar strong view. He said the ANC posed a threat to democracy because it believes it was brought to power by God.
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Breakfast disagreed with former President Thabo Mbeki’s claim, who reportedly claimed the ANC was too big to fail.
“If the ANC collapsed today, ceased to exist, this country would become ungovernable simply by the influence of the party,” he said.
Mbeki, who has been tasked by the ANC to bring unity between its structures in terms of a renewal resolution from the 2017 Nasrec conference, addressed Free State ANC delegates about party unity and renewal.
Prior to the appointment of the interim provincial committee, Free State was divided into two factions: one was followers, former prime minister and suspended ANC secretary general Ace Magashule and the other supporters of President Cyril Ramaphosa. Breakfast described Mbeki’s statement as “deceptive”.
“I tend to disagree. It’s like blackmail to say that the ANC was ordained by God to stay in power forever. It’s like there are no men and women or parties who can do the job of the country,” he said.
Mathekga, author of both Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa, said it was not true that the country would be ungovernable without the ANC. Mathekga said it was sad that the ANC and many South Africans were so used to having the ANC in charge that they believed the SA would collapse without it in government.
“I don’t think it’s true that this country can’t function without the ANC,” Mathekga said.
“Look around you and see some of the big cities where the ANC is not in charge, such as Johannesburg, Tshwane and Cape Town, things are not falling apart.
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“The idea that if the ANC runs out of power, the country will collapse is the ANC’s permissiveness.
“My view, as I argued last year, is that the ANC’s loss of power should not be seen as tragic because it says South Africans need to find another point of representation — something different from the ANC.”
South Africans were already moving away from the ANC, its mandate had been shortened and it was struggling to pass bills in parliament. This meant that voters no longer wanted to give the party a stronger mandate. Breakfast said it was the ANC that posed a threat to democracy because it refused to accept defeat, as happened in recent municipal polls.
“Look what they’ve done in Joburg and Tshwane, disrupting council meetings,” he said. “If it does this on a small scale like this, how much more on a large scale on a national level? Is that what they mean when they say the country would be ungovernable without them?”
He said an argument by other political scientists that the SA would know no democracy until the ANC lost power seemed to hold true because it was determined to hold on to power, with a hook or swindler.
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