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Political parties are built to tell voters what they have done right. At its manifesto launch, the African National Congress did something far more unusual. It told voters where it had failed.
Before defending its record, before selling its promises and before asking voters to trust it again, the ANC placed an image of failure on its own screen. Behind its president was a photograph of a rundown rural facility accompanied by words few governing parties would willingly put on campaign material: “The ANC presents our Manifesto in full acknowledgement of areas in which we have fallen short.”
That sentence may prove more consequential than many of the promises contained in the manifesto itself.
Because the ANC was not simply launching a manifesto. It was attempting something much harder: renegotiating its relationship with voters who no longer need the opposition to tell them that the government has failed them. The question is whether admitting failure can persuade those voters to return.
When the voter already knows
There is a well-established communications tactic known as “stealing thunder”. The principle is simple: disclose damaging information about yourself before somebody else does.
Lawyers use it in courtrooms. Corporations use it in crises. Political campaigns use it when they know an opponent is preparing an attack.
The logic is powerful. Bad news can sometimes be less damaging when it comes voluntarily from the person responsible for it. The disclosure can make the speaker appear more credible because the audience concludes: At least they are telling us the truth.
That appears to be the gamble the ANC is making. But there is an important difference. The ANC is not revealing a secret.
Millions of South Africans already know that public services have failed in places. They experience that reality in roads, water, electricity, housing, municipal administration and the everyday frustrations of dealing with institutions that do not work as they should.
The voter does not need a manifesto slide to discover failure. The voter has lived it.
That makes the ANC’s acknowledgment simultaneously powerful and dangerous. Powerful because denying an obvious reality would further erode credibility. Dangerous because once a governing party publicly accepts that reality, the political conversation changes.
The question is no longer: Did you fail? The question becomes: If you knew you failed, why should we believe you will succeed this time?
This distinction matters. What happened on that manifesto stage was not an apology. No individual accepted responsibility. No minister was named. No failed programme was attached to a consequence. No deadline was offered alongside the acknowledgment.
The party conceded the existence of failure without yet accepting the political cost of that failure. That may be effective communication. But voters should not confuse effective communication with accountability.
There is a profound difference between saying we have fallen short and saying: this is where we failed, this is why, this is who is responsible, this is what will change, and this is when you should judge us again.
The first is a message. The second is accountability. And that is where the ANC’s strategy will ultimately stand or fall. A political party cannot indefinitely campaign on the emotional power of acknowledging problems it has had the power to solve. At some point, honesty must acquire a deadline.
There is another reason this strategy is unusually risky. The ANC is operating in a fundamentally different political environment from the one it dominated for decades.
It no longer controls the political conversation in the way a dominant governing party once could. Its rivals have become increasingly sophisticated at turning moments, images and fragments of political communication into digital campaign material.
And the ANC has just given them unusually potent material. There is no need to prove the image was authentic. There is no need to accuse the ANC of failure. There is no need for opposition research. The governing party has authenticated the argument itself.
Imagine the campaign advertisement. An image of failed infrastructure. ANC branding. The ANC president standing underneath it. And the ANC’s own words acknowledging that it has “fallen short”.
For an opposition campaign, the attack almost writes itself. That is the paradox of political honesty in the digital age. A message intended to demonstrate humility to one audience can become devastating evidence in the hands of another.
The ANC may have been trying to steal the opposition’s thunder. It may instead have supplied the lightning.
It would be too easy, however, to dismiss the moment as a communications mistake. There is another possibility. Perhaps the ANC understands something important about the electorate: that pretending everything is working is now more damaging than admitting that it is not.
For voters who once supported the party but have withdrawn, stayed home or moved elsewhere, acknowledgement may be the beginning of a different political conversation.
Not: trust us because we have succeeded. But: trust us because we finally understand why you stopped trusting us. That is a much more sophisticated proposition. It is also a much harder one to sustain. Because once a political party campaigns on self-awareness, voters are entitled to demand evidence of change.
The ANC cannot now retreat comfortably into generic promises. Having publicly acknowledged failure, it has raised the standard against which its manifesto should be judged.
Every admission should have a corresponding intervention. Every failure should have a remedy. Every remedy should have a timetable. And, wherever possible, somebody should be responsible for delivering it. Otherwise, acknowledgment becomes theatre: the language of accountability without its consequences.
This episode reveals something larger about modern political campaigning. Campaigns are no longer contests over who can manufacture the most flattering version of reality.
Voters have too much information, too many cameras and too much lived experience for that. Increasingly, the contest is over which political actor can most credibly interpret a reality voters already understand. That changes political communication.
The strongest message may no longer be: look at everything we have achieved. Sometimes it may be: we know where we failed you. But there is a second sentence that must follow: here is exactly what we are going to do about it. Without that sentence, acknowledgment eventually becomes another campaign technique.
With it, the ANC could be experimenting with something more consequential: a politics in which admitting failure becomes the starting point for rebuilding political trust, rather than merely an instrument for managing reputational damage. That distinction will not be decided at a manifesto launch. It will be decided in communities where voters can compare the photograph on the campaign screen with the reality outside their front doors.
The ANC has already told South Africans that it knows it has fallen short. Now comes the politically dangerous question: What happens when voters answer: we know. What are you going to do about it? DM
