WeeklySA_AdminPRAGMATISM: PAC stalwart Cunningham Ngcukana praises ANC for the mature ways it handled a reviled political system
By Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela
“Those scornful of the government of national unity (GNU) should hold their horses and rather give a deserved debt of gratitude to the African National Congress (ANC) for its composure in handling the electoral set-back and loss of outright parliamentary majority during the May 29 national and provincial elections.
These words came from the mouth of one of the outstanding leaders of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Cunningham Ngcukana.
Ngcukana, an ex-combatant of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), which was the PAC’s military wing, is also a former general secretary of the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), the second largest trade federation after the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
He said the Progressive Caucus, made up of, among others, the MK Party and the EFF, is driven by the hatred and antipathy towards the ANC, and unjustifiably engages in unhelpful polemics that are informed by ignorance and shallow political understanding that sound political economy is driven not by cynicism but by consensus and open-mindedness.
In an interview this week, Ngcukana said the wrong and fallacious perceptions held by some opposition political parties including the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Jacob Zuma-led MK Party, among others, were mainly fuelled by political immaturity of great proportion informed by the failure to contextually read and interpret the signs of times embedded in constitutional democracy.
He said the ANC was no longer the leader of society by virtue of having lost its majority it enjoyed for the past 30 years since 1994 after winning a landslide victory at the first democratic elections under the leadership of former president, Nelson Mandela, but that its demise at the polls should not diminish its importance in society, and the liberatory role in played in helping to bring about democracy in the country.
At the May 29 elections, the ANC suffered an electoral decline of 40% at the national stakes. In Gauteng, the country’s economic hub, the provincial government led by Premier Panyaza Lesufi returned a surprisingly poor 35% victory, forcing the ANC to be the leader of shaky coalition government. While the Gauteng provincial’s coalition suffers some form of governance instability, the wisdom and progress prevailing at the national level, even though slight, is missing.
Also, the ANC had been lamentably weakened in their failing constituencies of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), where the former formidable “glorious leader of society” lost the confidence of the masses, managing a poor and pitiful 35% and less that 20% in Gauteng and KZN respectively.
For its part, the EFF itself has lost favour with its own constituencies in both the national and provincial electoral stakes, being overtaken by newcomers MKP. The ANC remains the largest party, although its commanding superiority has been drastically reduced having amassed a mere 40% minority victory during the May 29 elections- a far cry from the 62% landslide victory of 1994.
This feat the ANC would repeat in subsequent electoral victories of 1999 and 2004, scoring 66.35% and 69.7% respectively under the leadership of former president Thabo Mbeki.
However, the small decline began to rear its ugly head in 2009 under the leadership of former president Zuma, dropping from the previous 2004 of nearly 70% to 65.9%. This could have been, in part, attributable to the formation of the breakaway COPE which amassed at the polls of 2009 some 8% of the voters’ share, shaving off some gains the ANC had made during the previous elections of 2004.
Under President Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC’s electoral decline has been exacerbated as the 2024 polls revealed. While, during Mbeki’s tenure in 2004, the ANC earned nearly 70% victory, in 2024, the same organisation scrapes home with a disappointing score of 40% – shedding 30% voters’ support during this period.
At the May 29 national and provincial elections, the ANC, nationally managed a miniscule 40% minority leadership, a result, if the ANC had not cobbled up votes from the minorities, would have to make do with forming a minority government which would have been unstable, and in many instances, would have denied it the right to pass the necessary budgets to fulfil the needs of a “restive society”. Also, the ANC had been lamentably weakened in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), where the former “glorious leader of society” lost the confidence of the masses, managing a poor and pitiful 35% and less that 20% in Gauteng and KZN respectively.
The EFF itself lost favour with its own constituencies in both the national and provincial electoral stakes, being overtaken by newcomers MKP as the third largest parties in the country after the ANC and DA. For the first time in 30 years, the ANC failed to win an outright victory during the last national and provincial elections on May 29 – earning 40% at the national.
Given the “these realities”, it would have been strange if the ANC sat on its hands and did nothing strategically to “ensure that the country’s governance was not compromised”. Said Ngcukana: “If you criticise the government of national unity, what do you hope to achieve? To sit on your hands and do nothing to ensure that there is government in the country “In many parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world it is easy for majority parties when they lose elections to resort to refusing to handing over power to the victors.
“The ANC did not win outrightly. They do not have the required majority threshold to govern by themselves, and saw a solution in forming a government of national unity. You cannot fault them for doing the right thing, and to ensuring that governance in the country is not compromised. “Not to have foreseen the need to form a government of national unity would have been an act of irresponsibility of great proportion,” Ngcukana argued.
He said those who are irrationally critical of the GNU, must tell us what should happen when a governing party loses authority to govern the country because it has not achieved in an electoral process as it happened during the May 29 elections when the ANC did not gain an outright majority victory.
“While not ideal, it looks to me the best proposition is for the party with majority votes to invite others to form a government of national unity. “It is not the business of small parties to dictate what the party with majority votes must do.
We cannot allow such a situation to persist where government is paralysed by political ideologues. “We all need to be pragmatic when we have not won elections, and not behave, as some small parties do, as if we have won elections, and therefore gang up against the majority party, and seek to dictate terms.
“We need to allow for reasonable negotiations to take place, and not be thwarted by unreasonableness,” said Ngcukana. “Lack of governance, and political ructions, send wrong signals to the markets, whatever we might think of them. “In the end we want to see economic indices working in people’s favour, with low inflation rates becoming the order of the day.” Most importantly, argued Ngcukana, the country must be grateful that the ANC, seeing political power slipping from their hands, did not allow for chaos “to muddy political waters” by pretending it had won outright victory.
“The ANC recognised that with its 40% victory, it did not have the mandate to run the country all by itself, and so invited willing political players to run the country by consensus, thus giving confidence to the markets and to the people of this country that it was willing to govern with a consensus of the people, but would not be bullied by political parties that sought to create a political and governance chaos.”
He added: “It is too early to make a call of whether the government of national unity was a success or not. It will take some few years later, when political and economic indicators have given us an inclination of how we have performed, and whether we are keeping inflation down to allow the consumers across the board to enjoy some economic relief.
“It is going to be a hard slog, but we should not allow the prophets of doom to derail the process.
“What we need to recognise as the nation is that there are no enemies, but political rivals. To describe your political rivals as your enemies, as the EFF and MKP tend to do, is to display political immaturity.
“We have to harbour political differences, but that should not make us enemies. Political struggle must be matched with economic struggles, and we should all strive to help one another to achieve the best outcomes even in places of darkness,” Said Ngcukana.
“We all want to see economic growth, and more investments coming to our country, and this will have the effect to improve the economy, and by extension, the lives of South Africans.
“There will always be tensions in coalition governments, but this requires maturity and the ability to talk to one another and not to insult those you wrongly describe as your enemies.”
Ngcukana said political accolades should be accorded to the leadership of organisations such as Rise Mzansi, Action South Africa, the United Democratic Movement, the PAC, and Build One Nation, for making the government of national unity to effectively function, despite “all the teething problems”.
