Podcast: Joburg Ready to Dump the ANC

A new poll has the ANC at just 18% in Johannesburg, in the city that’s been its political heart since before 1994.

Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are back for the twentieth episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from the Financial Mail and Scrolla.Africa.

A new Social Research Foundation poll puts the ANC at 18% support in Johannesburg, down from 30% in March, in a city that’s been central to the party’s history since before 1994. Rob and Zuks unpack what the collapse actually means for the November municipal elections, and Zuks shares an exclusive detail from his own reporting, ActionSA has told him it would genuinely consider a coalition with the DA once the results are in.

The conversation moves to Zuks’ own column on the DA’s new manifesto, and whether South Africa’s real problem is having the wrong policies or simply years of poor implementation. Zuks pushes back on “efficiency” as a simple fix, pointing to who actually holds economic power in the country, and explains why the DA’s past coalitions in Tshwane and Ekurhuleni collapsed.

The episode closes on the case against seven special forces soldiers and one military police officer charged with murdering Hawks detective Frans Mathipa, and what it reveals about whether South Africa’s military answers to anyone. Zuks makes the sharpest case of the episode, that nothing will happen to the generals involved because they’re simply carrying out what the ANC wants, while an outgoing president has little authority left to stop them.