Summary
The ANC's levels of power have been declining in all four domains considered – organisation- movement, people, elections and the state. Whilst not triggering collapse, there is much more uncertainty circa 2011 about the ANC's ability to regenerate power than at any previous point in the period since 1994. The co-declines across the four power domains indicate the severity of the challenges ahead for the ANC. The ANC retains incredible strengths. It remains in a powerful and direct relationship with the people. There are penetrating criticisms, but these have not been translating into citizen disinheritance of the ANC. Intermittent punishment of the ANC, many threats to punish it and minority migration have happened. The ANC has suffered electoral declines, yet it remains in a different stratosphere from the opposition parties. It has both the resources and the will to reverse losses where these are suffered. The ANC's greatest contemporary weakness is its flawed management of the state. ANC problems tend to become state problems. Yet, the ANC offers abundant undertakings to turn around local government, provincial government, and extensive intra-state collapses in probity. Thus far, South Africans largely appear to accept the reassurances, or at least continue giving the ANC another chance to get things right. Most contradictory of them all, is the ANC as party-movement. The ANC combines immense organisational powers of mass membership and mobilisation, with agonising deliberations on farcical branches and cadres that cannot ‘pass through the eye of the needle’. The chapter takes stock of the overall strengths and the weaknesses that the ANC experiences in the four domains, and draws out conclusions on its regeneration of power.
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- Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2012