For the ANC to think white voters will rescue them is wishful thinking

Photo credit: Darryn van der Walt via Flickr

City Press reported this weekend that the ANC has formed a special crisis committee to woo more of the minority voters.

According to reports, this committee is led by JP Pretorius from Nelson Mandela Bay and the intention is to get 20% of white voters. 

I immediately had a little snort-laugh. You know those, you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me chuckles. Then I started to wonder how many voters they would have to convince to put there cross next to Cyril Ramaphosa’s face on the ballot paper.  

Of course, the IEC does not classify voters according to race, so I had to do some very rough calculations – just to get an idea.

So here goes: There are about 39 million voters registered at the moment, which amounts to roughly 67% of total eligible voters in the country. There are just over 4.6 million whites in the country. So, if 67% of that group registers, it would be somewhere in the order of 3.1 million people.

If the ANC wants to attract 20% of these white voters, they will have to convince over 620 000 white voters to vote for them….

Well, that ain’t going to happen. 

Yes, in Madiba’s time it was a totally different story. Many, many whites voted for the ANC during the first democratic election. However, the ANC of today is very different from that of the 1994 era. 

For example: although, the ANC still officially declares non-racialism as central to its policies, in reality non-racialism has all but disappeared when it comes to representation of minorities in the ANC.  This is blatantly obvious in the NEC, Parliament and cabinet. 

In 1994 the top 20 of the ANC NEC had 8 members from minority groups: Dullah Omar, Ronnie Kasrils, Joe Slovo, Mac Maharaj, Ahmed Kathrada, Trevor Manual, Kader Asmal and… hold on to your hats…“onse” Carl Niehaus. 

So almost 40% came from minority groups and of those 30% were white. 

Fast forward to last year’s NEC election and there are only two NEC members from minority groups in the top 20: Tina Joemat Peterson and Febe Potgieter.  In fact, the only other member of a minority group that was elected on the 80 member-NEC was Barbara Creecy. (They subsequently had to co-opt 3 members of minority groups to address the imbalance).

Barbara Creecy is also currently the only white person in cabinet. The only other ministers from minority groups are Pravin Gordhan, Ebrahim Patel and Patricia de Lille. Compare that to the 8 ministers in a much smaller cabinet of Nelson Mandela and the 9 ministers in Thabo Mbeki’s first cabinet. 

I don’t know exactly how many ANC MPs from minority groups were in parliament in 1994 compared to now, but I can categorically state – a lot more. 

I know that none of these ministers, MPs or NEC members think of themselves as representing minority groups. They will insist that they represent all the ANC voters or party members – of whom the vast majority are black. Given this reality it is also correct that the representation reflects the racial profile of the voters and members. 

However, as much as the small representation of black leadership in the DA will make black voters think twice before voting for the DA, white and minority voters will increasingly wonder if there is any home for them in the ANC. 

Of course, there are many other reasons white - and for that matter voters of all races - will not feel drawn to the ANC such as corruption, lack of service delivery, safety and security etc.  However, before the ANC has any chance of addressing these concerns, they will need to convince the voters that they are still serious about non-racialism inside the party. 

I would also argue that this is most probably not the best use of scarce resources inside the party. Although the ANC had a significant drop in support during the last local government elections, it was clear that - with the exception of a few small pockets - voters who had historically voted for the ANC, did not vote for other parties. They just did not vote.

If the ANC wants to do well in the upcoming national election, they are far better off spending their time and energy setting up systems to get these voters to the polls on election day, as well as motivating these voters to make the effort to turn up. 

To think that over 500 000 white voters, as well as increasing numbers from other minority groups, will come to the rescue of the ANC, is sheer wishful thinking. They have to deserve it first.