Ramaphosa buying ANC time by delaying election date — Malema

President Cyril Ramaphosa and the governing ANC are buying time by delaying the announcement of the election date — after realising they are going to lose the elections as the euphoria that was associated with Ramaphosa has evaporated.

This is according to EFF leader Julius Malema, who at a press conference on Thursday said delaying the elections will not save the ANC.

Malema argued the ANC now hope the opposition will, in the campaign period ahead, make a mistake that may assist the ANC’s electoral fortunes. 

There was no justifiable reason for the delay as Ramaphosa announced the 2019 election date during state of the nation address (Sona), he said.

“This guy [Ramaphosa] is hiding the thing [election date]. He’s not talking, he’s not budging. I don’t know, he thinks he can buy himself some time,” said Malema.

“Look, to see that you are dealing with a crook, the election date was announced during the state of the nation address in 2019.”

Malema believes the so-called “Ramaphoria” at the time was the reason he announced the date earlier.

“You know why he did that? Because he was still hot at the time. He knew that ‘I can’t postpone this, I must hit while the iron is still hot’. He announced it because he knew all ratings were like ‘the man’.”

But now that the polls are showing the ANC is likely to dip below 50% — with some polling even suggesting the governing party could drop to below 40% — Ramaphosa is delaying announcing the election date, he said.

According to the constitution, the elections have to be held 90 days after the expiry of the current term.

Ramaphosa has kept his cards close to his chest and has shown no signs of announcing the date any time soon.

“Now all ratings are bad, so they are saying, ‘No, let’s buy ourselves some time. Maybe these guys will create a mistake or something and then this thing becomes more expensive for us.’”

Holding elections in August would leave this country worse off, he warned.

Malema said he is confident the ANC will be taken out of power through democratic means at the elections.

“Observer missions are always welcome. There’s no regime change here, what regime change? We are just going to remove them through democratic means, whether there is a British observer or US observer or whatever observer. They are going out. They can call any observer from wherever, no-one is coming to rescue them. They are going out.”

Ipsos predicts the ANC could drop below 40% and the EFF could topple the DA as the official opposition.

Malema said Ipsos has seldom got its predictions completely wrong, except in the 2014 elections.

“Ipsos only got the election prediction on the EFF wrong in 2014 — and not the EFF only, on everyone. Today Helen Zille is insulting them, saying we can’t listen to Ipsos, they don’t mean anything. These people have never been completely out on their prediction.

“Ipsos told us last year in March, they said to us: ‘We don’t know what you are doing, we don’t know what message you are spreading, but stick to that message — and if you do so successfully, by December you are going to pass the DA.’

“So when this outcome came, we were not shocked — we were told about it before. The same way we were told about all manner of predictions as they come because Ipsos is an international, credible research institution.”

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