We all remember the excitement when Cope was formed back in 2008. Thabo Mbeki had just been removed as president and all the bad apples had taken over government.
Between January and April 2009, our streets and television sets were all painted yellow. A new Congress of the People had been born and it looked ready to dethrone the ANC.
The main target of Cope was Jacob Zuma. A criminally implicated presidential candidate at the time who they felt wasn’t supposed to have won power at the ANC’s Polokwane conference. In fact, they said, all Zuma’s cronies were corrupt.
They regarded Zuma as being clueless about the constitutional template for running the country. They didn’t like the fact that Zuma had removed Mbeki and therefore it was time for revenge.
Mbeki denied having any involvement in the formation of Cope, as did many other high profile leaders of the ANC, such as Trevor Manuel most recently.
Nevertheless, some South Africans bought into the idea of Cope at the time. They voted for this group of former ANC leaders who believed they had much more to offer than Zuma’s ANC.
They said that the ANC of Zuma was not what the ANC used to be – and it was they who possessed the ethical convictions of the struggle that cemented the liberation movement in people’s hearts.
This message delivered more than 1-million votes for Cope in the 2009 general election – making them the third-largest party in SA at the time – leaving more established parties such as the UDM, the IFP and the FF Plus far behind.
Cope scooped 7.4% of the national vote, which translated to 30 seats in parliament. This was an incredible achievement for a party that came into existence just a few months before the elections.
These numbers even exceeded what the EFF managed to get in its first national election in 2014. Like Cope, the EFF was formed eight months before the 2014 national elections as another anti-Zuma formation, and they managed to get 6% of the national vote and 25 seats in parliament.
This simple comparison gives us a picture of how groundbreaking Cope was in the post-1994 political landscape. Cope had enormous potential at a time the country wasn’t expecting anything that could dare to compete with the ANC – especially an alternative party being led by former black leaders of the liberation Struggle.
Fast-forward to 2022. Cope has now existed for 14 years and it has repeated every single mistake the ANC has ever made.
Cope leaders have been fighting in the courts for positions since its formation. Its purpose ceased to be about the people – it became about maintaining seats in parliament so that its leaders could continue earning big salaries.
All its provincial and regional structures have collapsed. It has no branches anymore. It has no tangible message to offer South Africans.
Cope became completely misplaced in the national conversation when the political climate among black voters began to shift towards more radical topics such as land expropriation, free education, nationalisation, and gender-based violence. This new space was now taken by the EFF – and the EFF actually drove a more productive campaign against Zuma than Cope.
Cope was left with no ground to stand on. No quality debates were coming from it even on simple issues raised in parliament. To get our attention, Cope resorted to childish behaviour and jokes in parliament as we witnessed with William Madisha screaming “hong-hong” in the Assembly.
Today, they are again at each other’s throats in public, fighting for the remaining seat they hope they’ll get in parliament in 2024. In fact, there’s clear evidence that the 2024 national elections will be the death of Cope. This eventuality is giving them sleepless nights and the infighting is going to continue among them until the party dies.
In simple terms, Cope has absolutely no reason to exist anymore. Zuma is gone and the pressing issues affecting the majority of the voters – who are the poor and the working-class – are being enveloped between the ANC and the EFF, with new parties also coming into the mix for this same contested base, such as ActionSA and the Patriotic Alliance.
The white racist cohort is covered by the DA and FF Plus.
In essence, SA has evolved, transformed and moved on from the politics of the older generation that Mosiuoa Lekota, Mvume Dandala, Mbeki and Mbhazima Shilowa had to offer.
The game is now more agile, quicker, innovative, frenzied, radical, confrontational, controversial and colourful – and there’s absolutely no space and purpose for Cope in it.
It must just close shop.
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