ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula admit the ANC suffered a severe defeat to Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), which stole the bulk of its votes from the ANC in Wednesday’s fiercely contested elections.
According to the latest figures, the ANC has only garnered just more than 40% of the votes with just over 6 million, while the five-months-old MK Party snatched over 2 million against the DA’s 3 million. The EFF, which also performed poorly, only garnered just over 1 million.
Speaking during a media briefing at the IEC national results centre in Midrand on Sunday, Mbalula said the ANC had still to fully grasp what happened at the elections.
He, however, acknowledged the Zuma factor, especially in KZN where the MK Party emerged as the leader of the pack and in Mpumalanga where it became the official opposition in the province.
Mbalula revealed that the party, which is set to meet this week, will be deliberating on some of the issues including possible coalitions before making a final determination.
“As the ANC, we will analyse the phenomenon of the MK Party in Mpumalanga and KZN; we have got to analyse that phenomenon, it goes back to that deep analysis we are going to conduct.
“We can’t do that if we start blaming structures as we knew Zuma would get support in KZN and elsewhere, but not this much. Ahead of the elections, our biggest worry was the IFP in KZN and the posture that the Royal House had taken as it was moving away from us and entering politics by aiding the IFP. As we went into the elections everyone wanted us down including the media,” Mbalula said.
He further stated that if it was not for Zuma and the MK Party, the ANC would not have performed this poorly.
“If Zuma did not form the MK Party, we would not be here talking about so and so and even in low-voter turnout cushioned by KZN and other parts. The MK Party really did eat into our base.”
Mbalula, who joked about the party’s poor performance at the elections, said there was nothing they could do to stop the Zuma Tsunami once it was clear that he had established the MK Party right under their noses.
“Zuma was unstoppable. There was nothing we could do to stop that tsunami. He closed a void and it has not favoured IFP and us. But it served him as a father figure leader coming out in KZN.
“The void favoured Zuma and it’s a matter that we will analyse for days to come and we will make that analysis together with structures in KZN and find out if certain people worked with Zuma while inside ANC,” he said.
The Star