President Cyril Ramaphosa says the ANC losing its majority for the first time since 1994 in the May 29 election, under his guard as the head of the “liberation movement”, was a “big shocker” and forced the party to confront a new reality.
While Ramaphosa, like most politicians, knew the 2024 elections would change the trajectory of South African politics, in a recent conversation with Annika Larsen on eNCA, he said he did not expect the ANC to experience such humbling changes.
“It was a shock. It was the most unbelievable outcome. Even with the entry of the MK Party, I knew that they would pick up votes but never to this extent where they would reduce the ANC’s majority the way that they did,” he said.
The ANC received 40.18% of the vote, down from 57.5% in 2019.
Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, contesting national elections for the first time, attained 4,584,864 votes (14.58% of the vote). Post 1994, no new party in its first election had attained 2-million votes.
Ramaphosa said the unexpected results forced the ANC to confront a new political reality.
“It was a big shocker, unexpected, but it was a big moment. We had to accept that this is the new reality that we had to deal with,” Ramaphosa noted.
He opened up about how the ANC was compelled to provide leadership, even in the absence of a majority.
“We had to ask ourselves many questions. Do we go into opposition and we discounted that and said no, the ANC has to give leadership, even when it was not in government it gave leadership. The Freedom Charter, the African Claims in the 40s — leadership is what the ANC is expected to give.”
Ramaphosa said even before the election he had been approached by various parties proposing coalition talks. Despite his initial confidence in the ANC’s possible victory, Ramaphosa admitted to underestimating the survey predictions which signalled the bruising loss.
“I didn’t want to talk because I thought the ANC was going to win, so why would I even entertain entering into a coalition?” he said. “And in many ways, that was a process of discounting what the surveys were saying because the surveys kept saying we are going to go below 50, and I discounted that and dismissed it,” he said.
“We keep hoping that the most populated areas in our country, when the count is done, will sort of come in and we were saying we are waiting for Soweto to come in, we’re waiting for Umlazi to come in KZN because those usually boost our numbers, but low and behold it didn’t happen. Then the penny dropped, and I heard the sound very loudly and clearly.”
Reflecting on the implications, Ramaphosa noted that South Africa’s democracy has matured faster than anticipated.
“In my head I now said to myself the democracy has now matured way ahead of the time we thought that it would mature. We are now democratically so matured like your northern hemisphere countries where no single party has an outright majority. Somehow I thought this would come one day, but I never thought it would come now.”
Ramaphosa was also reminded of a moment in 2018 when he lost his composure in parliament, telling DA chief whip John Steenhuisen to “shut up”. He addressed this lapse by reflecting on his leadership style.
“I tend to be cool in temperament, and I don’t usually get my feathers ruffled, but there are moments where you need to be firm and hard but even so, not to perform and to shout and swear at people. Some people have a management or a leadership style like that. This is very foreign to me,” he said.
He acknowledged that respect and persuasion are crucial in leadership and expressed a willingness to apologise for his behaviour if given the opportunity.
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