AND SO, the A.N.C will get five more years. Five more years of Zuma, five more years of their bizarre neo-liberal-faux-socialist-oligarchy, five more years of meandering economic performance. The poor will go nowhere, the rich will get richer. And I will continue to find myself agape at the A.N.C’s enduring, almost insurmountable popularity.

They retain power, because for all its incompetence, the A.N.C. knows its strengths: Uneducated, poor voters. I don’t mean this an attack on those people, it’s not their fault; but the fact remains poor and uneducated people are the politicians’ favourite demographic. I can’t but help to think of Lenin’s particularly uncomplicated promise of “Peace, land and bread” when I listen to Zuma speak. Everything is always kept tightly packaged, punchy and extremely quotable. It’s patrimonial, infused “don’t worry, we got this” air. It’s perfect for the unwashed masses. Over 50% of South Africans live below the poverty line. They are the political kingmakers in this country. And the politicians know it. No single group in South Africa is doted upon come election time like our nation’s poor. Every five years, they dutifully roll into the townships on the potholed roads in their gilded cavalcades, fancy watches glinting in the sun, and make promises that cannot possibly be kept. Six-million jobs? They can’t even deliver text books.

This is why I’m highly dubious about the A.N.C’s desire interest in ending poverty in this country. What political party—especially one as morally and ideologically bankrupt as the A.N.C.—would wipe out their own power base? It would be like the Republican Party alienating itself from America’s bible belt by endorsing Shari’ah law. An end to poverty in South Africa will be to the A.N.C what the Enlightenment was to European Christianity. Look at three places where the A.N.C. is utterly dominant: North-West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga (67, 78 and 78% respectively); these are largely rural areas with very high rates of poverty. And then we glance at the provinces which house South Africa’s largest conurbations (and the educated work force that goes with them): The A.N.C. lost the Cape again (getting a tot over 30%), and they’re are sliding backwards at a rate of knots in Gauteng.

Through all of this I find myself wondering: Just what are the A.N.C.’s values? Nothing much, it seems to me; merely a conglomeration of vague promises and even more vague ideals. I think that’s because ideologically, they had it easy for so long; they had Apartheid. Apartheid was such a dominant, all encompassingly awful system that one was either with it or against it, either fighting it or a part of the problem. And it was the A.N.C’s raison d’être, their revolutionary touchstone, the axis around which they turned. They had this well defined place in political thought as “anti-Apartheid”. Then Apartheid ended and they were in charge now. They embraced the vainglory and easy self-enrichment afforded by victory and never rallied around a new cause—and it manifested in the party’s chaotic lack of discipline.

The A.N.C rule has been a miserable failure. They have failed because they are either incapable of or unwilling to effectively carry out the countless unsexy parts of governance, the staid bureaucratic tasks on which a successful country is built. Now, the A.N.C. is just clinging to history. But as the chasm of time continues to grow between South Africa now and South Africa then, they seem more and more like rebels without a cause.

Amandla? For who? Certainly not the poor.