Mbalula votes at Orange Grove and names the cost of living as the ANC's ballot question
The ANC secretary general says he will carry the memory of Mandela, Biko and Tambo into the booth, and lists food prices, housing, electricity and youth jobs as what his vote is for.
Fikile Mbalula will vote at Orange Grove, the African National Congress said on its official X account, and the party used the announcement to set out in his own words what he says his ballot is for.
In the statement, the ANC secretary general places the vote inside the country’s history before he places it inside any policy. “As I cast my vote I will carry with me the memory of Nelson Mandela, Peter Mokaba, Winnie Mandela, Joe Slovo, Oliver Tambo, Ahmed Kathrada, Hector Peterson, Steve Biko and many others who’s blood was spilt and those jailed for daring to fight a system that saw them as sub human,” he says. He describes walking into the voting booth “heavy with the responsibility of history and what still needs to be done to achieve a better life for all and to stop those we seek to take us back.”
Asked implicitly by his own statement what the vote is for, Mbalula answers with a list. “What I will be voting for is to lower the rising cost of living so our people can afford food and essentials, adequate housing for all, skills training so our youth are ready for the job market, doing away with experience as a requirement for job opportunities, water and electricity infrastructure upgrades and lowering the price of electricity.”
The list continues into social protection and health. He names “improving the social protection system of grants, free education and NHI introduction” as what he is voting for, and adds “fighting the rise of right wing elements in our society and protecting the most vulnerable in our society.”
The statement does not set out how any of those commitments would be funded, what legislation or budget would carry them, or on what timetable. It is a statement of what the party’s secretary general says he is voting for, issued by the party on its own account, not a policy document.
The ANC closes the post by calling on voters to turn out. “The ANC calls upon all to exercise their democratic right to cast a ballot and remember what it took to get us to this point and the journey ahead,” Mbalula says, under the party’s sign-off line, “Let Us Continue Building Better Communities Together.”
What the post establishes is the ANC’s own framing of this election as it goes to the polls: the cost of living first, housing, electricity and youth employment alongside it, grants, free education and the National Health Insurance behind those, and a named opponent in what Mbalula calls right wing elements. Whether that framing matches the record of the government the ANC has led is the question voters take into the booth, and it is not one this statement addresses.
