Showing strength: The ANC holds its final rally ahead of elections in 2024. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
News Analysis
TThere are many reasons why South Africans do not vote for the ANC.
Africa's oldest liberation movement has led South Africa's government for three decades, and over time its weaknesses have grown and been repeatedly exposed in the media and by civil society.
Their rule has been so dominant that its failures have translated into the country's failures: corruption, crime, failure to create jobs, the rising cost of living, inequality and a lack of preparedness for the ongoing climate crisis.
The clearest analogy for electricity decline is that the party in power can no longer keep the power flowing – except, bizarrely, for the months leading up to this Wednesday’s election, during which the state-run electricity company burned billions of rands worth of diesel to temporarily halt rolling blackouts.
Still, the people of Africa's largest economy will almost certainly elect the ANC back to power, though its victory will likely not be as overwhelming as usual: the party has never received less than 62 percent of the vote in a national election, and it may not have an absolute majority.
They may have to form a coalition government. But even in the most critical opinion polls, 40% of the voters are in favor.
70% of the population will once again put their faith in the party of Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela (and, more recently, to a lesser extent, that of Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa).
The numbers are set to rise as the election approaches.
Unlike some countries, where electoral districting and vote rigging have vastly inflated support for the ruling party, South Africa is not, making it highly unlikely that it will hold any election other than one in which people are free to vote.
The ANC is certainly still the most popular political party in the country.
This is in large part due to the “liberation dividend” – the loyalty that many liberation fighters enjoy when they finally come to power. This loyalty is not entirely misplaced: South Africa has many faults, but there are many reasons to be grateful to the ANC.
In 1994, the country introduced multiparty democracy and avoided civil war.
The apartheid regime and expanded basic services — designed by apartheid
The government was created to serve only the country's large white minority, it also produced one of the most liberal constitutions in the world and allowed the media to detail the failures of the ANC in the public interest.
For many voters, especially those who experienced the horrors of apartheid, the ANC does no more wrong than the government it replaced, a point often overlooked by foreign commentators with short memories.
A particularly egregious example is the UK Times “Thirty years after black people got the right to vote, South Africa is the most unequal society on earth,” he wrote recently, as if South Africa was more equal under white supremacist rule.
The ghost of apartheid works to the ANC's advantage because the official opposition has done little to banish it: the Democratic Alliance (DA) has only had one black leader in its history, Mmusi Maimane, but ousted him after disappointing electoral results.
Performance in 2019.
Former Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leong later described Maimane's tenure as a “failed experiment” and, predictably, the party replaced him with a white man.
Fed up, black leaders left the party in droves, strengthening the perception that it was a white-led party that catered to the elites.
“The racism I experienced in the DA was not overt, but rather dishonest, covert, paternalistic and subtle,” said Herman Mashaba, a former DA mayor who left to start his own party. Mail & Guardian In 2021.
“This was the kind of racism that makes you question why we are spending our time providing services to informal settlements when they do not represent 'traditional DA voters' or 'tax paying people'.”
DA leader John Steenhausen said the comments came from people who were “bitter and angry” after losing the leadership race, but when it came to the sensitive issue of race relations he appeared to be insensitive.
Asked if the country was ready for another white president, he compared himself to Barack Obama, saying, “I was a minority in America, and yet I was able to get elected.”
Steenhausen’s chances of winning are slim: he has said that even winning 22% of the vote would be a major achievement for the DA, but this is a surprisingly limited ambition for an established opposition party operating in a free and fair political system.
the environment, and competition from a corrupt and scandal-prone ruling party.
Other opposition parties have been vocal but have yet to muster enough support to pose a real threat to the ANC. Opinion polls show Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters are aiming for about 10% of the vote, the same as last time.
Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party, a new party led by former President Jacob
Mr Zuma's approval rating is the most surprising: Opinion polls have him at around 13% – but his popularity is largely confined to areas with large Zulu populations, such as KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
And last week the Constitutional Court ruled that President Zuma
The contempt of court charge means he cannot run for parliament, thwarting some of the MK party's loftier ambitions.
While the ANC will undoubtedly remain the most popular party in the country, we should still be concerned about its declining popularity. How worried we should be will depend on the exact percentage of its decline. If the ANC maintains more than 50% of the vote, it will have a majority in the National Assembly and will be able to appoint the president on its own.
If his approval rating falls below 40%, he will need to cooperate with at least one major opposition group.
Either the DA, EFF or MK will form the government, and judging by the track record of local government coalitions so far, this will be a messy process.
The most likely scenario is that the ANC will win between 40% and 50% of the vote, which would allow it to form a coalition government with smaller parties such as the newly formed Rise Mzansi, whose policies are similar to the ANC's but which would position itself as the “adult” in a coalition government scenario.
Rise Mzansi may be able to extract small concessions but will not be in a position to shape the government as a whole.
After all, this is still ANC country – at least until 2029.
This article was first Continenta weekly newspaper distributed across Africa. Mail & GuardianDesigned to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download the free version. here
