ROAD TO 2024: Staging an election as late as August could give smaller parties more time to set up structures and campaign, argues Zukile Majova.
President Cyril Ramaphosa could save the ANC from a well-deserved clobbering at the polls by announcing an early election date.
New parties with credible founding values and led by incredible people, like banker Roger Jardine’s Change Starts Now, could grab as much as 2.5% of the vote if they are given a longer runway to set up structures and to campaign.
A possible 5% party is Jacob Zuma’s new uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) whose propaganda machinery claims to have registered over four million supporters.
It has no branches, no regional, provincial or elected national executive. Giving such parties an extra runway of three months could prove costly for the ANC.
Ramaphosa has 90 days to call an election after the end of the term of office for the current national and provincial governments.
The current term of office for this administration ends on 18 May 2024.
The Constitution dictates the country must have an election within 90 days, meaning the election date could be as far as mid-August 2024.
Calling an election in May means the ruling party could soak up the euphoria of the 27 April Freedom Day celebrations and immediately go to the polls a few weeks later.
Such a date would also come just before the surge in electricity demand of the winter months.
Extreme load shedding on the eve of an election could wipe out 10% of the vote and that is more than enough for the ANC to lose both Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal to coalition governments.
Zuma is already on a roadshow telling potential voters that during his term of office, he ended load shedding and kept the retail price of fuel at affordable levels.
He won’t dare talk about the nine wasted years, state capture and how his sugar daddies, the Guptas, hijacked executive powers, hiring and firing ministers while Zuma pretended to be running the country.
The ANC is vulnerable and has been losing votes in every election. The party has lost 12.19% of its voters between 2004, when it won 69.69% of the vote, and 2019, when it polled just 57.50%.
