Gwede Mantashe and Cyril Ramaphosa attend the ANC 112th Anniversary Rally in Mbombela on January 13, 2024 (Photo by PHILL MAGakoe/AFP)/ALTERNATE CROP
As with the 2019 general election, the ANC will bet on President Cyril Ramaphosa's popularity to deliver victory in this year's watershed national election.
ANC elections chief Mdumiseni Ntuli said as much in an interview with the newspaper. email and guardian He revealed last week that an internal opinion poll showed Mr Ramaphosa remained more popular than the ruling party itself.
ANC leaders, including Mr Ramaphosa, will be in KwaZulu-Natal this week, where the party will deliver its manifesto document to prospective voters.
Ntuli said the party will conduct another internal poll by the end of this month as an indicator of whether Ramaphosa remains the most popular figure in politics. He said this in the last poll. M&G It is understood to have been submitted to the National Executive Committee (NEC) late last year and indicated Mr Ramaphosa was more popular than the ANC.
“If you look at the polls so far, as we've seen throughout the year and even last year, the president is slightly ahead of the ANC as an organization. We don’t know what the situation will be,” Ntuli said.
“I think we'll see what comes out by the end of February. But my sense is that President Ramaphosa is still polling better than presidents of all other political parties in the country.”
He said internal polling suggested that Ramaphosa was more popular than supporters such as Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema. Stated.
Mr Ntuli said the polls suggested there was some dissatisfaction with the ANC's performance, but also that there was no clear alternative to what the ANC was offering at leadership level.
“I think the fact that our leader polls better than other leaders in the country is an advantage in itself for the ANC. That is a favorable base for us to campaign on. I think so,” he said.
But he acknowledged that the “Ramaphoria'' that engulfed the country during the first years of the ANC president's term had come to an end. But Mr Ntuli said Mr Ramaphosa's approval ratings had been affected, but not significantly.
In 2019, Mr Ntuli's predecessor, Fikile Mbalula, acknowledged that the ANC had used Mr Ramaphosa's popularity to regain a slim majority. Mbalula said that had Ramaphosa not won against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in the 2017 Nasrec leadership election, his party would have won 40% of the vote in the national election that year.
In an interview last week, Ntuli said that in 2019, Ramaphosa appealed to a section of the public that the ANC had historically failed to attract large numbers of people.
“I therefore think the NEC was justified in saying that Mr Ramaphosa's presence had a special impact,” he added.
An external opinion poll conducted by the Social Research Foundation in November suggested that former president Thabo Mbeki is more popular than Ramaphosa within the party. Mbeki received 70% points from ANC supporters, 45% from DA supporters and 53% from EFF supporters. Mr Ramaphosa received 68% points from ANC supporters, 27% from DA supporters and 33% from EFF supporters.
The release of the ANC's manifesto will test Mr Ramaphosa's popularity in KwaZulu-Natal, where he has struggled to gain support due to the ominous presence of former party president Jacob Zuma.
“The position of the President in KZN today is much better than it was in 2019. As you may remember, the one who was recalled in 2019 was very popular within KZN, but also to Ramaphosa. It was because JZ was recalled because he was very angry about it,” Ntuli said.
“So my own view is…I think the president has much better support in KZN than he did in 2019. I feel it shouldn't be difficult for us.'' We hope to lead similar rallies, or even better rallies. ”