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Ramaphosa on ANC decline in the WC: “Are we connected to our people?”

by Robert Duigan | Jul 21, 2025

The ANC has been on a steep decline, and the DA have cleverly capitalised on this by encouraging voter apathy in black areas

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ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa, addressing members in Mbekweni, expressed concern over the party’s declining support in the Western Cape, a Democratic Alliance stronghold. The ANC’s vote share fell to just over 20% in the 2021 municipal elections, prompting the president to ask, “are we connected to our people?”

The short answer is no.

The ANC has grappled with a collapse of trust, with the party focusing on internal conflicts over lists and positions rather than community service. Ramaphosa urged grassroots engagement to rebuild trust before next year’s local polls, emphasizing the party’s historical role in South Africa’s democracy. Senior leaders, including Fikile Mbalula, were deployed across the province to project unity.

The African National Congress (ANC) has seen a marked decline in support in the Western Cape over the past decade. In the 2014 general election, the ANC secured 32.89% of the provincial vote, but by 2024, this had fallen to 22.98%. Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has maintained its dominance, winning 59.38% in 2014, 55.45% in 2019, and 55.29% in 2024.

Even combining the ANC splinter group, the EFF, with the ANC vote, shows an uninterrupted decline:

Voter turnout in the Western Cape has also dropped, from 72.76% in 2014 to 58.09% in 2024. This decline may have disproportionately affected the ANC, as lower turnout could reduce participation among key voter groups.

In the 2024 elections, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) emerged as the third-largest party with 7.8% of the provincial vote, focusing on identity politics for Coloured voters. This has further eroded ANC support among this group, moreso than from DA support.

Voter turnout in the Western Cape varies by race, with Coloured and White voters likely having higher participation than Black African voters, based on electoral trends. The DA’s dominance (55.29% in 2024) suggests stronger Coloured and White turnout, while the ANC’s decline (22.98% in 2024) indicates lower Black African participation. Exact turnout data by race is unavailable, but partial evidence shows higher turnout in White (39%) and Coloured (32%) areas compared to Black (23%) areas in Swellendam in 2024.

This is particularly notable in the former iKapa settlements in Cape Town, where IEC officials trying to drive registration have previously been chased away by residents who not only resent the presence of politicians, but appear to be resentful even of the concept of representative democracy.

According to insiders, the DA today practices a strategy of tactical encouragement of voter apathy in black areas – after realising that campaigning in many black areas actually increases the turnout for the ANC and EFF, they have been steadily withdrawing from areas outside their traditional ethnic base, especially as land invasions and migrant labour shift the demographics against them.

This asymmetric racial turnout is also responsible for the DA’s only municipal victory in KZN, uMngeni, where the 22%-strong white population, voting in the highest white turnout local elections on record, pushed out the waning ANC.

But the experience of uMngeni is instructive. By 2024, the MK had seized all the wards the DA had previously won, along with every ANC ward.

The Cape’s history has its own lessons – from 1854 until 1878, Afrikaners, despite being the majority of the qualified electorate, were almost entirely politically inactive. But with the rise of the Afrikaner Bond under Jan Hofmeyr, they began to reshape the polity.

Should the DA’s stagnant position continue, those apathetic voters may soon learn to turn out for someone new.

Independent news and opinion articles with a focus on the Western Cape, written for a more conservative audience – the silent majority with good old common sense.