The Roman satirist Juvenal wrote of the bread and circuses, "panem et circenses" by which the Roman elite pacified the commoners by distributing free grain and holding public games.

The ANC's lavish birthday bash brought Juvenal's observation to mind.  By distributing thousands of free bus and train tickets, T shirts and free food, forty thousand or so people, mainly from the poorer areas, provided the bulk of the rent-a-crowd that was intended to impress the city, the province and the nation. 

The bash signalled the start of the 2016 local government election campaign as well as the resolve of the ANC to "liberate" the province and the city from DA rule.  Nothing was said about the fact that the ANC had its turn some years ago when it ruled the Western Cape and Cape Town. 

Has everyone forgotten that Lynne Brown, now the minister charged with keeping our lights on was the premier of the Western Cape?  Not a single provincial department obtained a clean audit under her rule.

Has everyone overlooked the fact that Ms Nomaindia Mfeketo was a failure as the mayor of Cape Town before her talents were rewarded with her promotion  - first to deputy speaker of Parliament and now to deputy minister of International Relations and Co-operation? 

The voters liberated themselves and  threw the ANC out because they were no good.  They proved they were unable to govern effectively. Perhaps the ANC has forgotten all this but one wonders whether the voters have forgotten.

Before and after the rally, the elite of the ANC filled the 5 star hotels, restaurants and night clubs and quaffed vastly expensive liquor and ate gourmet food. Nothing wrong with that, of course, if you can afford it. Two thousand five hundred of the elite filled the International Convention Centre for a lavish dinner characterised by a display of opulence seldom seen in our country and certainly never experienced by the millions of unemployed who have not tasted the fruits of power in the way the elite have. Whether this display and the mega-millions spent on the birthday bash will bear fruit, only time will tell.

President Zuma told the  Cape that the ANC has the right to rule because of its struggle credentials.  The poor man seems not to understand how a constitutional democracy works. There must be some left in his party who do understand democracy.  They ought to explain to him that the voters have the right to vote for whomever they like and whichever candidate or party best serves their interests.

 In democracies, as opposed to traditional councils or dictatorships, people get voted in and then voted out at some stage.  Power is not an absolute and politicians never have the "right to rule," except for the period of their mandate, which runs to the next election.  They are then judged by the voters and either given another term or turfed out. This means that the current DA government also does not have the right to stay in power forever. 

If the ANC can persuade the voters that the ANC would do a better job, they might give the ANC another mandate.  One of the ways of doing this would be to point to the great success the ANC has made of other cities, like Johannesburg, and provinces like the Eastern Cape and compare those with what it considers to be the poor job the DA has done.

One sure way of persuading the voters of the Western Cape never to support the ANC is to continue insulting them and trying to make them feel like aliens in their own country.

The voters supported the DA in overwhelming numbers.  To suggest that it is because they are lesser beings and not black enough, is to show the ugliest face yet of the ANC and the racist tactics it increasingly adopts as it steadily loses support in all the major metro areas of our country.  The ANC needs to realise that denigrating the Cape and implying that only black people are of consequence to it alienates it from the biggest strength of South Africa: that is our diversity of colours, cultures, languages and religions. The DA, to its credit, recognises this and today it has more supporters who are black, coloured and Indian, than it has white supporters.

In former times the ANC prided itself on being non-racial.  It had room for Africans who were not black.  Increasingly, it alienates everyone who belongs to a minority and at the same time it is losing the support of many black people who want to unite with their fellow countrymen in a broad  South African nation that values all of us, regards every person in the country as of equal value and strives to promote the welfare and the success of the whole nation.

Racists like Mr Gwede Mantashe do the ANC no favours at all and his attitude of contempt towards the Western Cape wins no converts. Silly statements about apartheid Cape Town wanting to keep "us" out have no resonance, except perhaps with his "rent-a-crowd."

The resentment shown because the City Council made the ANC pay up in advance for the use of the stadium and the International Convention Centre caused mirth around the country.  Everyone knows that the ANC often fails to pay its bills - sometimes for years after functions.  The ratepayers would have been entitled to be very annoyed with the Council if it had placed their interests second and given the ANC credit when we continue reading that the party does not have the money to pay some of its staff.

If the ANC truly aspires to gaining the support of Western Cape voters, it will have to think again.  As of now, there is no possibility of it gaining the majority in the province, in the city, or in a swathe of local authorities throughout the province.

Douglas Gibson is a former Opposition chief whip and a former ambassador to Thailand.

This article first appeared in Beeld.

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