Africa-Press – South-Africa. Newly-elected Gauteng EFF chairperson Nkululeko Dunga has warned that the only way South Africans can rid themselves of a failing ANC is for opposition parties to get people to vote in the 2024 national and provincial elections.
Dunga said voter apathy was the single biggest cause of the ANC staying in power, despite it failing communities time and again.
Using himself as an example, Dunga told News24 that – although at the time he was an ANC Youth League regional leader – he had taken a conscious decision in 2014 to vote for the then newly-formed opposition party, the EFF.
“I joined the EFF in 2015, but in 2014 during the elections, I was a member of the executive committee of the ANC Youth League in Ward 43 Ekurhuleni, and while I was standing in line to cast my vote, I told a very close friend that I am going to vote for the EFF.
“It had suddenly dawned on me that we as the voters are the change we want to see, and the ANC had, despite our love for it, failed us time and again.”
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Speaking to Thembi Msane, who was the EFF’s coordinator for elections at the time, had convinced him that he needed to contribute to the change he had been hoping for through actively voting for a party other than the ANC, Dunga said.
Msane is now an EFF Member of Parliament.
Dunga said that, just as Msane and her late husband had played a critical role in him finally changing his allegiances, opposition parties needed to focus on politically conscientising disillusioned citizens of the importance of their vote in changing the current status quo that had led to their apathy.
“One of the pressing things we will do as the newly elected Gauteng leadership is to intensify political education among our own members, because we need to capacitate and give consciousness to our own members first.
“Equally, we have a responsibility to conscientise society through political education. We need to find a way of engaging society to be conscious enough to understand particularly the importance of their own vote, and the need for them to go out on the voting day and really vote if they want change.”
Elected unopposed
After the 2019 national elections, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) revealed that if all the eligible voters who stayed away from the polls had voted for one party, that party would have won the elections.
Dunga was over the weekend elected unopposed as Gauteng EFF chairperson, replacing Mandisa Mashego.
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Mashego quit the organisation following the 2019 general elections. Her deputy Itani Mukwevho had been acting in the position until now.
Dunga will be deputised by Phillip Makwala, while Moshe Koma has been re-elected as provincial secretary.
Koma’s deputy is Bethuell Munya, while Jeanette Maloka was elected as the new treasurer.
Previously, Dunga – who has been praised as one of the EFF’s shining stars by party leader Julius Malema – was EFF regional leader in Ekurhuleni.
He was elected in 2019 as the regional chairperson at the second regional people’s assembly of the party.
He was re-elected to the position in August 2021, but will have to step down since being elected as provincial chairperson.
In 2016, under his predecessor, the EFF in Ekurhuleni received 11.2% of the votes and 25 seats in the council. After Dunga took charge, the party grew its support during the 2021 elections, receiving 13.6% of the total votes and gaining five more (31) seats in council.
‘There is a united understanding’
Dunga believes this is why he his election was uncontested.
“There is a united understanding of which direction the EFF should go among Gauteng delegates. Our emergence [as the new leadership] was based on what we have achieved, particularly as the EFF in Ekurhuleni.
“When delegates analysed our programme of action that we have undertaken, and the stability of the structures of the EFF where we were serving in Ekurhuleni, they decided to give us the same mandate. They want us to replicate in Gauteng what we achieved in Ekurhuleni.”
Dunga added that another achievement of his leadership in Ekurhuleni was the tabling of nine motions that had been passed in council.
“The motions that have been passed include the call for the formalisation of informal settlements, the amendment of the indigent policy that will then allow for the Sassa recipients to be automatic qualifiers of the indigent policy [which enables the subsidisation of basic services and tariff charges for South Africans who can not afford].”
Political control of Gauteng is expected to be hotly contested in the 2024 polls amid the ANC’s continued electoral decline.
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