If Ramaphosa goes successor will find it near impossible to rebuild trust

Substantive share of ANC’s voter base saw him as an integral part of their continuing support of the party

In July, the Social Research Foundation polled 3,200 registered voters in SA to glean their broad perceptions of life in the country. Several of the questions posed via that poll were political, given the rapidly changing political climate in the aftermath of the 2021 local government elections.

Of the political questions a number related to President Cyril Ramaphosa and how voters might react were he to depart from the ANC.

For many ANC voters, the relationship between them and their party represents more than the typical relationship between a brand and its consumer.

For many and this is regularly borne out in polls the ANC was the agent in which they invested their hope for the human dignity and better life that would follow decades of apartheid-era oppression. That it lost its majority in the 2021 elections was therefore of particular significance, given the history of the country and, more pressingly, the question of how its future politics would evolve.

What jarred at once from our

July poll was that Ramaphosa’s favourability ranking was substantially down from that recorded after his defeat of Jacob Zuma in 2017.

Through 2018 and 2019, Ramaphosa sustained scores in the mid to high-60 percentiles. In 2019, at the time of the national election, he scored 67, a full 10 points stronger than the tally he led his party to in that election.

However, this July the figure was polled at 48, which by SA standards was strong (key opposition leaders poll in the 20s) but nonetheless markedly down from the highs that coincided with the early period of “Ramaphoria”.

On whether his time in command of the ANC had brought about a better life, the ANC’s voters were split. Just a third (33%) held the view that conditions within the country had become “much better” since Zuma’s demise, while a further 15% were of the opinion that conditions had become “somewhat better” since then.

However, Ramaphosa’s own strategists would be concerned to learn that 36% sensed conditions had become “much worse” during his time in office, while 8% believed conditions to have become “somewhat worse”.

A significant share of ANC voters identified Ramaphosa as an important factor in their decision to turn out for the party. While only a small percentage (4%) held that he was “the only reason” they voted for the party, a significantly greater 48% said he was “very important” to their decision to vote ANC and a further 16% responded that he was “quite important” to their decision to continue voting ANC.

All told, therefore, 68% of ANC voters said his presence within the party motivated their support for the party to an important degree. This coincided with focus group work the foundation did earlier in the year, which found ANC supporters at a loss to say who beyond Ramaphosa they regarded as virtuous leaders within the party.

When asked about a possible breakout from the ANC, 39% of its voters said they would vote for a party led by Ramaphosa if he walked away. A third (35%) said they would vote for whatever he left behind (most probably led by the factions the public think of as the “radical economic transformation” crowd). A further 15% of ANC voters said they would vote for another party entirely should Ramaphosa depart.

When asked if they would continue to support the ANC should its support drop below 50% of the vote in a future national election, two-thirds (67%) strongly agreed, a further 7% agreed, while 22% disagreed to some degree and the balance were unsure. The upshot is that about a quarter to a third of the ANC voter base thought they may reconsider their support should their party lose the 2024 election (the foundation’s July poll, modelled for turnout, estimated ANC electoral support at just below 50% and three substantive subsequent polls commissioned by third parties all put ANC support below 40%).

Read in its totality, in our opinion, the data lends itself to one overarching conclusion: that a substantive share of the ANC voter base regarded Ramaphosa as an integral part of their continuing support of the party due to the sense that he was not like many of his peers, whose malfeasance had brought it into disrepute.

The Phala Phala charge was therefore probably chosen carefully to disable this key attribute. It may have succeeded well beyond the expectation of its architects, given that the effect may be to crush, in the hearts of vast shares of ANC voters, the last vestiges of hope they held for the renewal of the movement that had meant so much to many of them throughout their lives. A movement that has achieved a lot too, first in the transition to democracy and then in the first decade thereafter, which saw living standards improve markedly.

It is a statement of just how fragile the ANC has become that the effect of dashing confidence in just one man might set in motion a final chain of events that sees the ANC surrender not only its national majority but, in the aftermath of that, its standing as SA’s dominant political force. If, for example, ANC support slips by a third, which our numbers suggest is not implausible, the ANC may

within this decade sink to a point of commanding not many more percentage points in a national election than the present DA.

When our July poll asked whether Ramaphosa would ultimately succeed in renewing the ANC and delivering a better life for its supporters, such was the hope in his abilities that nearly two-thirds (62%) agreed that he would.

For them the disappointment at events of the past week will be acute, and either Ramaphosa, or alternatively whoever of his erstwhile colleagues comes to lead the ANC by Christmas, will face a near insurmountable task repairing the trust that has been broken.

68% OF ANC VOTERS SAID HIS PRESENCE MOTIVATED THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE PARTY TO AN IMPORTANT DEGREE

THE PHALA PHALA CHARGE WAS PROBABLY CHOSEN CAREFULLY TO DISABLE THIS KEY ATTRIBUTE