POLITICAL NEWS - Party has alienated voters, Secretary-General Mantashe warns.
Infighting and scandal are threatening the stranglehold South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has held on power since the end of apartheid.
The parlous state of Africa’s oldest political movement, once revered for its role in ending white-minority rule, was laid bare in a report presented by its secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, at a party policy conference that’s being held in Johannesburg.
Officials intent on securing positions and state resources have alienated voters and tarred the ANC as a corrupt organization, it admits.
While Mantashe sidestepped a question as to whether the ANC may lose the outright majority it’s held since 1994 in elections due to be held in two years, that risk has been raised by other senior officials and party veterans.
In municipal elections last year, its share of the national vote plummeted to 54 percent, from 62 percent in 2014, and it lost control of three of the biggest cities.
President Jacob Zuma, 75, who’s been implicated in a series of scandals since taking office in 2009, has been a lightening rod for the public’s disaffection.
