South Africans will punish ANC at 2024 polls: former treasurer Mathews Phosa

The ANC is going to be punished at the polls in the 2024 national general elections.

This is according to the party’s former treasurer-general Mathews Phosa, who on Thursday addressed the inaugural STADIO seminar in Centurion, Tshwane.

According to Phosa, the ANC’s failure to provide clean and efficient government will come back to bite the party.

He said the party has been marred by allegations of corruption in all spheres of government, has not been able to maintain roads and other infrastructure and people are poor and unemployed.

All of this is seemingly irking the majority of South Africans who have lost trust in the self-styled glorious movement if the trends of last year’s local government election are anything to go by.

The ANC lost three of its key metropolitan municipalities in Gauteng that are now governed by the opposition led by the DA.

This trend is likely to play itself out at national level in the 2024 election.

“Our government, the ANC government, was severely punished at the municipal elections, losing control of prized metropolitans and losing majority support in that sphere. I have little doubt that this trend will continue with the 2024 elections,” Phosa said.

“In politics, and I have been there for a long time, momentum counts and the governing party has not only lost the trust of the voters but also its position as the moral leader of society.

“We used to pride ourselves as members of the ANC that we were the leaders of society, I don’t think we can stand up again and say so.”

Phosa said there are those in the ANC who were under the impression that the ANC would govern forever. This, he said, was a dream.

Several ANC leaders, including deputy president David Mabuza, have recently sought to dispel the notion of pundits that the party was on a brink of losing power.

Delivering the Peter Mokaba memorial lecture in Polokwane in June, Mabuza brazenly proclaimed that those who say the ANC will be voted out of power are “dreaming”.

However, Phosa seems to believe that the party could be heading for opposition benches.

“I think time will prove me right, there will be viable opposition and there will be alignment of forces after 2024, which might even form a government and then the ANC joins them,” he said.

Phosa said unless the ANC joins that alliance of forces, it will be in opposition.

“And I’m not saying something funny, what has happened in Ekurhuleni? The ANC is in opposition. In Johannesburg, the ANC is in opposition. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the ANC is in opposition. Pretoria, the ANC is in opposition.

“That development could reflect on the national platform very easily. And it’s looming large. It is not good to deny the reality that’s building.”

Phosa said that there has to be some form of a “rapture” internally in the ANC for the party to radically renew itself.

“The ANC needs a radical renewal, whether it will happen within the ANC as it stands now I’m very doubtful. There may be a rapture which may be healthy for the ANC,” he said.

“Our society is made up of good people from all walks of life, these people need to come together under a flag of clean government. We need a platform where people can unite who believe in clean government and unless the ANC has a rapture, it will not qualify to be that platform.”

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