The ANC had to go the extra mile in this election because of the hard lessons it learnt in the 2024 national elections.
That was the admission from ANC deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane, who spoke to Africa Daily at the Results Operations Centre (ROC) in Midrand on Wednesday night as votes were being counted across the country.
Mokonyane said the party could not afford to repeat the mistakes of 2024, when it lost its national majority for the first time since democracy and was forced into a Government of National Unity. This time, she said, the ANC had to return to the basics of local campaigning: being with voters, in communities, listening to what would work for them.
“Elections and campaigning have been demanding,” Mokonyane said. “Well, it’s been too demanding.”
“We had to go an extra mile, having learned from our fortunes of 2024 and also understanding the intimacy of a local government campaign. You had to go and be with the voter amongst communities and get what would work for the community. It’s about what historically the ANC was known of. And I think we need to sustain this beyond an election campaign.”
Mokonyane described Wednesday’s voting day as orderly, despite the scale of the operation and the challenges that came with it.
“This was quite a very orderly day. Of course, there’s no such an operation of this magnitude that can go without hurdles, but hurdles that were easily resolved on site,” she said.
“Of course, the weather had a huge impact. The high temperatures in some parts of the country, the issues about the threats of the rain were also a problem.”
She praised voters, particularly young people, for turning out, even as she conceded that youth participation could have been better.
“Everybody has done their part,” Mokonyane said.
“But so far so good. Seeing also people, young people coming out, they could have done better. We are yet to get the report, but everybody has done his or her part. We’ve worked crisscross the country. The moment has now come.”
The ANC, like other parties, raised concerns with the Electoral Commission during the day. Mokonyane said those issues were dealt with quickly, both at municipal level and at national level at the ROC.
“Most of our issues that were related to the IEC were resolved on site in the municipal electoral officers’ places, as well as here at the national level when there were trends like the miscommunication about the dos and don’ts of today. So we, we are quite fine,” Mokonyane said.
That is a marked contrast to the tone adopted by the uMkhonto weSizwe Party on the same night, which told Africa Daily it is preparing a formal complaint against the IEC over alleged irregularities, including claims about deceased people appearing on the voters’ roll.
Whether that extra mile translates into votes will become clear as results from Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape are captured and audited.
The intimacy of a local campaign, she said, is what the ANC was historically known for. Sustaining it beyond an election campaign, she argued, is now the party’s challenge.
By 7am on Thursday, with the first results starting to trickle in on Wednesday night, 15% of the vote had been counted.