PODCAST | Will the ANC go quietly in 2024?

Veteran SA editor and commentator Tim du Plessis tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he worries the ANC may not accept the result of a 2024 general election in which it loses badly.

This is a party that knows only liberation struggle and state power, he says. Opposition is foreign territory. Since it lost power in the Western Cape — its only real experience of a major loss of power — the ANC in the province has withered on the vine and is all but dysfunctional.

There’s also the worrying precedent of former ANC president Thabo Mbeki hiding the contents of a report on the 2002 election in Zimbabwe, which Robert Mugabe stole, until he was forced to publish it. And the Electoral Commission of SA’s handling of elections generally, Du Plessis notes drily, is not improving.

This is a key debate for the next few years as the ANC edges towards an election loss. What may matter is how big it is.

Podcasts from the Edge is a production of TimesLIVE Podcasts.

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