Yet we seem to struggle to see past the ANC and do not trust ourselves to envision a better future or create a space for political alternatives. Paradoxically, despite its governance and leadership failures, the ANC still commands a powerful hold on the minds and hearts of the majority of South Africans.

Despite its evident weaknesses, the party will, for some time, continue to triumph at the ballot box and hand us leaders that are substandard. Fanciful predictions that the ANC will be out of power in the next decade will not materialise, especially while we still look to it to give us a better leader in Mangaung.

The hope that the younger generation will have less affinity with the ANC’s history and symbols, and therefore bolster the possibility of a credible alternative, is misguided. As long as there are extreme differentials along racial lines in living standards, housing, education standards and economic opportunities, nationalist parties such as the ANC will continue to have life.

Menacingly, the prize of political power may fall into the hands of an extremely nationalistic and populist party.

The status quo can change only if we treat the ANC as technically dead, work hard to envision SA beyond the ANC, and put pressure on opposition parties to up their game. As long as we consider ourselves part of the fan clubs of various factions in the ANC, and follow every detail of its regional and provincial conferences, the party will continue to enjoy pride of place in our consciousness.

In the past, explanations for the ANC’s apparent electoral invincibility were based on the banal and patronising notion that "the majority of South Africans do not know how to vote rationally, but can only behave like a cattle herd". This explanation has served to fuel complacency.

It may well be those who are outside the ANC’s core constituency that are irrationally beholden to the myth of its invincibility by not showing enough commitment to push harder for decisive change. Because we are so fixated on the ANC, we have failed to hold opposition parties accountable and ask them tough questions about their poor performance.

Opposition parties should not be content with warming the benches in Parliament. They should demonstrate the will to win elections. Parties such as the Congress of the People and the United Democratic Movement, which at one point carried the hopes of those yearning for change, have decided to rest on their laurels.

Very few people view these parties as a serious alternative to the ANC. Yet there remains a crucial gap that needs to be filled — by parties that can define the challenges of our time and whose leadership, vision and policy programmes resonate well with the broader South African society.

Currently, only the Democratic Alliance (DA) can be counted as a proper opposition party with real future prospects of upsetting the ANC’s apple cart, especially at the provincial and municipal levels.

The DA has not only shown itself to be adept, but has run public administration superbly in the one province and the metro council under its control. It is free of the plagues of incompetence, corruption and maladministration that are emblematic of the ANC government. However, the DA’s electoral growth has its limits.

Its bureaucratic efficiencies notwithstanding, the DA is not a party that is serious about taking over government at national level. It is too provincial for such a mission. It has failed to make a powerful mark as a party that fully grasps SA’s socioeconomic challenges and captures the imagination of South Africans.

Another factor that limits the DA’s electoral growth is that it comes across as uncomfortable with the race question in SA — especially how to tackle the inequalities that still manifest strongly along racial lines. It has also failed to hone a transformational narrative that connects the aspirations of underprivileged black communities and the expectations of the black and white middle classes in the Western Cape.

Any party that hopes to occupy the space the ANC controls today would have to win the hearts and minds of the majority of the South African people. We should remember that it was not on the basis of solid policies that the ANC seized the centre ground of politics in the first place, but the promise of its moral leadership and a convincing narrative for change. It is this promise that is disintegrating today — the policy and governance failures are merely symptoms.

This article appeared in the Business Day of 31 August 2012