So, the extremely low turnout at this past weekend’s ANC birthday celebration rally should neither been seen as anything new nor a confirmation of the party’s “death”.
Frankly speaking, in 2026 we should not be debating the number of empty seats at mass political rallies. This is not the early 1990s where massive turnouts at soccer stadiums were seen as demonstrating a political party’s strength in that region. Even then, this was no scientific measure.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Cultural Movement, and its successor, the Inkatha Freedom Party, would pack the Jabulani Amphitheatre every year between 1975 and 1995, but that hardly translated to IFP victories in Soweto and the surroundings once the majority gained the right to vote.
Fast-forward to our most recent history. Didn’t EFF leader Julius Malema fill up eThekwini’s Moses Mabhida Stadium ahead of the 2024 general elections only to find out, after the polls, that many of those who sang and danced with him there had gone on to vote for Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party?
In fact, the series of political rallies by different parties in 2024 actually taught us, if anything, that attendance didn’t mean loyalty. The story of Thembeka Dliwayo, the young KwaZulu-Natal woman who became popularly known as NomaRally is a perfect example. She openly attended rallies and wore T-shirts of the ANC, the IFP, EFF and even Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA.
To her, these gatherings were as much as a curiosity as those Kwaito bashes our generation used to be mad about in the 1990s.
That you went to a Thebe and Boom Shaka Show or an Arthur Mafokane and Abashante didn’t really tell if you sided with Kalawa Jazzme or 999 Music in the misguided music “beef” of that era. You simply loved dance music.
Historians would probably tell us some day that mass political rallies stopped having the same meaning they had in the 1980s and 1990s around about 2008 when the triumphant pro-Zuma brigade in the ANC – led by outgoing Youth League leaders such as Fikile Mbalula and Zizi Kodwa – started turning ruling party mass gatherings into dance music concerts and celebrity shows.
By the time the ANC held its 2012 centenary celebrations in Mangaung, the line between a music concert and a political rally had long been blurred.
What seemed to draw in the crowds by then, was not the political message, but the list of popular acts billed for performances. But that is not how the party leadership saw things at the time.
Hence Zuma, his then ANC deputy Cyril Ramaphosa and the entire party National Executive Committee walked into a packed Ellis Park Rugby Stadium triumphantly singing “asinavalo” ahead of the 2016 local government elections – believing the stands to be a confirmation that they had won.
Come election day, the once safe Nelson Mandela Bay Metro was in the hands of the DA, Johannesburg was to have an EFF-backed DA mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba as the new boss and Tshwane, the capital city, was hanging in the balance. Luthuli House has never recovered from the trauma.
So, the extremely low turnout at this past weekend’s ANC birthday celebration rally should neither been seen as anything new nor a confirmation of the party’s “death”.
That the ANC is in decline and that its current NEC has no answers to this decline is without doubt.
What is really in question is whether the party’s political opponents are able to exploit the crisis further to a point where they would not need coalitions with the ANC to form governments at local levels this year and at provincial and local levels in 2029.
Watching turnouts at ANC rallies, in other words, is only part of the story. Are we seeing any group of parties, or a single party, showing potential to occupy the hegemonic space that has been an almost exclusive preserve of the ANC over the last 31 years?
But because the ANC is still the most dominant party, amassing 40% of the total votes in 2024’s elections, what it does cannot be ignored. Hence I suspect that there were millions more of us South Africans who watched the January 8 celebrations rally on our TV screens and streaming services than there were local soccer fans who watched the Afcon quarterfinals on the same day.
With this kind of brand pool still at their disposal, one would think that ANC strategists at Luthuli House would have seen the January 8 rally as giving it another fighting chance at winning back lost supporters. With millions watching, you’d think they’d try and put their best foot forward through a programme that promoted the key messages of fixing local government, ridding the leadership ranks of corruption and building an economy that actually employs people.
But, alas, all of that messaging was drowned-out by haphazard organisation and empty stands. To make matters worse, at the end of the ceremonies, some bright spark decided that the TV part of the rally should end with President Cyril Ramaphosa and his national executive committee dancing along to that maskandi song that, apparently, was the New Year’s Eve crossover song for UkhoziFM – Uzoncengwa unyoko by Umafikizolo (not to be confused with Mafikizolo, the group).
Uzoncengwa unyoko is such an odd, and in fact rude thing to say, especially when you want us to believe you are on your knees begging voters not to desert you.
