ActionSA is likely to play a big role in the general elections in 2024. The party proved itself a force to contend with in the 2021 local government elections. Given that it will be at least 18 months between those elections and the next, it can be expected that the party will go to 2024 with a lot more presence and experience than was the case going into the November 1 2021 elections.
It is safe to say that on the current trajectory, which makes coalition governments in the provinces and in the national government likely, any anti-ANC grouping will rely on ActionSA playing ball or even being allowed to call the shots.
This is not because the party is perfect. As has been the case with most new parties, ActionSA has had its fair share of internal disgruntlement. For example, the much-travelled Makhosi Khoza quit the party, saying it had “used and abused” her to win a ward in the tough Durban political terrain dominated by the ANC, the DA and the IFP.
One of ActionSA's strengths can also be its greatest weakness: the party seems obsessed with the ANC. It is as though if the ANC were to disappear from the face of the earth, ActionSA would struggle for meaning.
Incidentally, ActionSA can take a leaf from the ANC’s post-1994 failures. Despite the ANC having put together documents like “Ready to Govern” it became clear from its earliest days to now that the party was just not ready.
The February 1990 moment had caught it by surprise and things moved very quickly from that point onwards to April 1994 when it became government.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the ANC’s noble commitment to overthrow the apartheid regime made it forget to adequately prepare for what to do with power once they got it.
As a consequence of the party spending all its resources, intellectual and social, on deposing the National Party, it did not get time to formulate its own ideas of what it would do with power or, more importantly, do with its own cadres who would use their proximity to the state for self-enrichment.
And so we find ourselves here. ActionSA should start imagining itself as an entity whose identity does not depend on the ANC’s existence or malfeasance.
Hating the ANC, as its leader Mashaba openly and repeatedly displays, might be understandable but it is no strategy. Even the most faithful ANC activist acknowledges that the party has been a disappointment.
Repeating or pointing to the ANC’s failures does not, in itself, tell the electorate what will happen in the event that ActionSA displaces President Cyril Ramaphosa and his party as the most dominant force in our politics.
If ActionSA is to play a meaningful role in the next chapter of the democratic era, it will do well to craft itself as a party founded on an idea – any idea – other than loathing the ANC. Happily for it – and for everyone else wishing to contest the ANC – the field could not be more welcoming.
If you are reading this from anywhere in SA, it is safe to say that you have endured having to go without electricity at some point in the past 24 hours. It is likely that you or someone you know have been a victim of a crime that police have not been able to solve.
If you are like the majority of South Africans, you would have experienced a rapid depreciation of your money as everything else’s price increases.
In simple terms, there are many reasons to contest the governing party.
This is best shown by a record number of ANC activists availing themselves for election for any of the party’s top six (or seven if the constitution is amended) positions within the governing party. Even they think the current leadership is weak.
ActionSA must therefore start building a constructive image for what it holds for SA. As already illustrated above, it is spoilt for choice. It needs to be clear what it stands for and not what it cannot stand. A party founded on its obsession for what it stands against instead of what it stands for, limits its own future.
ActionSA needs to craft an image beyond its founder Herman Mashaba and reflect the kind of ideas and systems that will survive the guy should he find himself on the unfortunate end of the proverbial bus.
- Moya is Sowetan political editor
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