On Tuesday, Fikile Mbalula, the secretary general of the ANC, led a door-to-door campaign in Inanda and Ntuzuma, which are located in the north-west of Durban. During his visit, Mbalula urged residents to remain loyal to the ANC and avoid joining the breakaway political party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), led by Jacob Zuma. He cautioned people against falling for the latest trends and instead sticking with their political “home.”.
The top leaders of the political party, along with its national executive committee and alliance partners, will be spending the week in KwaZulu-Natal. The province contributed two million of the party’s 10 million votes nationally during the 2019 elections. The purpose of the visit is to ensure that the party maintains its majority after May 29.
The political party is currently encountering a challenge in the province due to the Moonshot Coalition, which includes the Democratic Alliance, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), and smaller parties. Additionally, the party is facing competition from Zuma’s party, which has gained votes from the ANC in recent by-elections.
Mbalula’s focus during the early part of the week is on the north of the city, working traditional ANC strongholds such as Ntuzuma and Inanda, where the party now faces a potential loss of votes as a result of the emergence of the MK party.
During the November 2021 local government elections, the ANC’s share of the vote in wards 57 and 107 of the eThekwini metro dropped below 50%. To address this issue, Mbalula visited homes in these wards and held community meetings in Amaoti and Ntuzuma to ask residents to vote for the ANC. At a public meeting in Amaoti, the ANC secretary general acknowledged the problems of toilets, water, and electricity supply, but asked residents of the area which only received municipal services after 1994, to “remember” who it was that brought services to them.
Mbalula mentioned that certain services in the area had been disrupted by unscrupulous individuals and urged the citizens to continue supporting “their organization” to ensure that the area’s progress was not hindered. He also stated that those who had misappropriated funds meant for community development and services were either being expelled from the party or had voluntarily resigned.
The ANC’s plans to extend the social grant system and to boost youth employment through a national service program after the election were central to Mbalula’s interactions with voters. He said that after the election the ANC would upgrade the R350 social relief of distress grant introduced during the Covid-19 lockdown into a basic income grant.
Young people would be given work opportunities through the South African National Defence Force and other state agencies through a national service programme to be introduced by an ANC government after the elections.
The ANC would also lift the restriction preventing those above the age of 35 from getting first-time jobs, while prior experience requirements for entrants into the public service would also be set aside, Mbalula said.
Mbalula said that although the ANC had “challenges,” they should continue to vote for the party that had fought for their freedom and was now attempting to improve their lives.
He said the ANC was “protecting freedom” and asked residents to use their “power” to keep the party in office by continuing to vote for it and to convince those who did not “believe” to follow suit.
“You all know the truth as black people, you need to stay in the ANC. You must always believe in the ANC and stay with your organization. Do not lose hope in the ANC. Those who left the ANC will still come back, they don’t know where they are going,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula is in charge of the province’s only metro, while ANC national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, has been deployed to the far north of KwaZulu-Natal. The region is expected to witness a fierce battle between ANC and IFP at the polls. The ANC’s first deputy secretary general, Nomvula Mokonyane, is leading the campaign in the Midlands, a stronghold for the party that is also under threat from the emergence of the MK party.
