DECRYPTING THE CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE’S DIMINISHING ELECTORAL PROSPECTS

Abstract

The Congress of the People’s (Cope) 7. 42 percent support in the 2009 general elections was followed by diminishing electoral prospects, which started to emerge as a trend in the 2011 local government elections. Its performance spiralled down to the lowest ebb in the 2014 general elections. Because of this an inevitable question is: What is the fate of Cope? Various attempts to answer this question abound, largely ascribing Cope’s woes to the leadership contestations that fragmented the party along the Mosioua Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa binary. This is a dominant narrative, with explanations that the leadership contestations inhibited the efficiency of Cope’s machinery to contest elections. Much is written about these aspects, including Cope’s ideological question and its internal organization. This article reconsiders Cope’s electoral history to establish a context for yet another account for its diminishing electoral prospects, perhaps beyond the dominant narrative. An electoral prospect is a function of the history of an electoral performance. Electoral statistics are crunched to explain Cope’s electoral performance. From this exercise the article contends that the diminishing electoral prospects of Cope are the consequences of how it fared in the 2009 general elections.