In a futile attempt to perpetuate the doomed alliance, the ANC dispensed an ever-increasing number of patronage positions to its partners, especially the SACP.  Some analysts are of the view that SACP members occupy a third of all senior positions in government, despite having no proven following.  When Cosatu deployment is added, the ANC has in effect divested itself of half of the positions it could have allocated to its loyal members.  Not surprisingly, some are no longer committed to the ANC.  Their view coincides with Radio 702’s Redi Tlhabi’s response to a caller.  When they said they owed allegiance to the ANC by virtue of “the struggle”, Tlhabi said she would not vote for what parties did in the past, but for what they would do in the future.

Staying in the alliance has cost the ANC dearly: Leon Louw’s latest column in BDlive published by Business Day.

Further excerpts

ANC faces humiliating death” was the headline that dominated the front page of Monday’s Sowetan.  The ANC’s alliance with Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) “is dead and whoever believes otherwise is delusional” this paper reported former president Kgalema Motlanthe as saying.

A News24 article said “the ANC crisis has reached boiling point”.  ANC stalwart and president Nelson Mandela’s first wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, told the Sunday Independent that “the power struggle in the ANC-led alliance is disgusting”.  A Mail & Guardian article said the ANC is “terminally ill”.  ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe blamed former president Thabo Mbeki for “the crisis”.

And so it goes.  Increasingly, prominent leaders, clerics, analysts and others join the chorus of concern about the ANC and its alliance, all of which vindicates what I wrote in this column in 2013: “The once mighty National Party vanished as if spirited away by magicians.  The mighty ANC could follow, if it has not already done so.”

. . . . .

What Mantashe calls “the crisis in the country and within the ANC” might, however, be a blessing in disguise for the ANC and the country.  Winston Churchill reputedly said that one should never let a good crisis go to waste.  Once the alliance was perpetuated beyond its sell-by date, instability was inevitable.  Membership prevented the parties from developing distinctive identities.  Was Cosatu part of civil society or government? Likewise, the ANC? Was the SACP a party or a parasite? These conundrums could not be resolved without a crisis.  Deleterious though the crisis might be, it has silver linings.  SA is experiencing long-overdue democratic maturity.  More voters than ever before will probably, like Tlhabi, think about who to vote for in the forthcoming local government election.

The growth of government as a means of buying votes will probably end in a return to fiscal and regulatory sanity.  Attention is shifting among ANC candidates from patronage to performance.  The deluge of populist racist policies might crest and recede.  The ANC might resurrect its traditional identity with traditional moderate and centrist policies.  A lack of outright majorities will probably lead to the formation of balanced multi-party alliances.