ANALYSIS | Riverside shows some ANC progress, but the message gets lost

The African National Congress has spent years complaining that it is losing the political battle despite having a long list of achievements to its name. But perhaps the party needs to look no further than the government it has run for more than three decades to find the reason.

The ANC’s biggest Achilles’ heel has been the gap between what it has achieved, what it has failed to deliver, and its inability to communicate either effectively.

Nkenke Kekana, the head of the ANC’s communications subcommittee, put the problem bluntly when he acknowledged that government had failed to tell “the good story of South Africa”. He pointed to infrastructure, roads, social housing and other interventions that are often taken for granted or simply not communicated effectively.

“The weakness is that government is unable to tell the good story of South Africa. You just have to travel to other countries in the world and compare ourselves, the infrastructure, the roads, the commitment to social housing ... So there’s been a lot of work that has been done.”

That admission is damning because communication is not an optional extra in politics. It is how governments demonstrate that their policies have changed people’s lives. If citizens do not know what government has done, or cannot connect those achievements to the party that governs, the political benefit is lost.

The irony was on full display on Sunday when the ANC chose Riverside as the venue for the launch of its local government elections manifesto . President Cyril Ramaphosa himself described the development as a symbol of what the ANC-led democratic state had achieved.

Riverside is the kind of development the ANC should be putting at the centre of its electoral argument. Ramaphosa spoke of people who had previously lived in one-room shacks in Alexandra now owning houses in a development where working-class residents live alongside wealthier South Africans.

“The people who live here, the majority, came from Alexandra. They lived in one-room shacks, and today they have their own houses delivered by the African National Congress,” Ramaphosa said.

He described Riverside as an example of the ANC’s attempt to undo apartheid’s geographical and economic divisions.

“Our task is to continue dispensing the divisions of the past,” Ramaphosa said. “That when we build houses, we should build houses of equality.”

The weakness is that government is unable to tell the good story of South Africa. You just have to travel to other countries in the world and compare ourselves, the infrastructure, the roads, the commitment to social housing ... So there’s been a lot of work that has been done.

He also pointed to the provision of a clinic, a police station and a school as examples of government responding to residents’ demands.

“They said they wanted a school nearby, and the school is in progress,” Ramaphosa said.

“All these things are happening to ensure that we build communities, and it is not just a document that is written from a distance. It is a compact, a contract that is sustained by the lived experience of our people.”