Ebrahim Moosa – Radio Islam | 09 August 2016

One of the most startling developments observing this year’s municipal elections surely has to be the meteoric rise in support at the polls for an otherwise obscure South African political player.

As the agonising wait for election results played its course out last week at the IEC results operation centre in Pretoria, it struck me as most astounding how highly placed a party I had never heard of before was featuring.

The African Independent Congress(AIC), which has its roots in Matatiele in the Eastern Cape, consistently found itself performing just below the handful of political heavyweights on the leaderboard. And when the certified final results were announced by the IEC on Saturday night, the point was underscored, when the AIC featured prominently on almost all of the scorecards from key locations.

The AIC solicited 0.78% of the total vote, earning itself 55 municipal seats nationally.

What makes this achievement so noteworthy is that it emanates from a party – whose name, let alone anything else – hardly rings a bell with most South Africans. Campaign advertising for the party in many of the wards wherein it did well is virtually non-existent, and the party does not even seem to maintain an active website.

History

As per available information, the party was founded on 12 December 2005 in the Matatiele locality in protest against the inclusion of the area in the Eastern Cape by the African National Congress government, rather than KwaZulu-Natal. The disputed boundary change went to court, and was, despite the objections, eventually confirmed.

Seen as a vehicle for advancing the concerns of local residents, the AIC won 10 seats in elections to the Matatiele municipality in the 2006 local government elections and 7 in 2011. It also earned one seat in the Eastern Cape provincial legislature in the 2009 elections.

In the South African general election of 2014, the AIC won 97 462 votes, or 0.53% of the total vote, which opened the doors to the party occupying three seats in the National Assembly. It retained its seat in the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature. This success in 2014 came despite the party not standing in seven of the nine provinces, and the AIC only having a small, regional base.

Last week’s results make the case of the AIC all the more curious, as the party’s support dipped even further in its traditional stronghold of Matatiele, whilst concurrently quadrupling in far flung parts of the nation.

How on earth?

In an election where even the established smaller political players such as COPE, the PAC and UDM failed to make a notable showing, many have found it mindboggling to fathom how the AIC managed to sail right through to the big league.

The most common explanation for this ascendancy highlights the branding of the party. The AIC logo shares the same colours as the ANC – black, yellow and green, and its abbreviation differs from that of the ANC by only one sandwiched letter. Furthermore, the AIC, in most municipal ballot papers for the PR vote, found itself positioned just above the ANC, due to its alphabetical ordering.

It is in this striking similarity in iconography with the ruling party that many say the success of the AIC lies. Inattentive, or sometimes illiterate, voters most likely seeking to vote ANC ended up miscasting their vote for the closest visual pretender to the ruling party.

The AIC does not take kindly to such insinuations.

“We were established in 2005, our people know us. To say we got ANC votes is to undermine our party,” deputy president Lulama Ntshayisa told Sapa in the wake of release of the 2014 election results.

Again this week, party leader Mandla Galo dismissed the accusations that the party had benefitted from the confusion over colours and names.

“I want to say that this this is psychological warfare. They are undermining the intelligence of the people of South Africa,” he said.

It may appear unfair to question the will of AIC voters in a poll declared free and fair, but there is hardly any other plausible explanation for the success of the AIC in disparate locations where it does not have an established political foothold, other than mistaken identity.

Little is known of the AIC’s promises or plans and governance, other than hints dropped by party leaders in media interviews. And advertising and brand presence of the party in South Africa’s main metros prior to the polls was virtually non-existent.

“Their colours are very close to us, we are next to each other on the ballot paper, and we suspect that people get to the ballot paper and mark on AIC instead of ANC. Their colours are very similar,” ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe told Radio Islam at the IEC Results Operation Centre on Saturday.

“Even me when I get to that ballot, I take extra care to ensure that I place my mark next to the ANC”.

Mantashe said the ruling party would take up its concerns on the matter with both the AIC and IEC soon, but said the ANC was not interested in any retribution.

“We can’t deprive the AIC. They got the seats, they are there”.

While the inroads made by the AIC in these elections have made the apparent effect of the similarity in branding most pronounced, concerns of the AIC raking in mistaken votes first prominently raised their head in 2014 national elections, leading some to question the quality of the ANC’s outreach to its voters.

“A political party mindset would have picked up,” wrote Edwin Matlapeng on Facebook, “that the AIC has colours like the ANC and is sitting just on top of our ballot entry on the paper, instead of the tone deaf #asinavalo [nonsense]”

For now, the AIC is here to stay, whilst the ANC licks it wounds from a staggering range of electoral foes.

The strangers from Matatiele may have snuck in from the backdoor, but their strategy and political evolution over the next few years could be critical in determining whether the AIC morphs into a credible national force, or becomes a footnote in South Africa’s poltical dustbin.

The AIC says that it “does not want to govern” but rather advocates a more inclusive type of governance model where ordinary citizens voices are considered in the political-decision making process. The AIC says that it is also opposed to any notions of a one-party state where a “ruling party takes decisions affecting the whole nation at party conferences”.

“Our strategy is that we need communities to decide what they want, not politicians. That is why we see sporadic community protests, because the ruling party decides for the people, not what the people want,” said AIC spokesman Aubrey Mhlongo on its vision that champions the need for communities to take centre stage in issues that affect them.