A tightrope walk: Opinion polls and forecasts suggest the ANC is unstable and will need all the help it can get during and after these elections. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
News Analysis
TThe ANC is likely to lose its majority in the National Assembly after the May 29 elections.
Parliament, which had once served as a theatrical disguise for the true centre of power in Luthuli House, was suddenly thrust back into the limelight.
So what happens? The future will depend a lot on how far the ANC falls below 50% approval rating.
The lower the better, the opposition would argue, but the lower it is the more unstable the “market” becomes, some might say.
The further the ANC's approval rating falls below 50 percent, the more combinations will be on the table in the struggle to form a multiparty government. And of course, the more vulnerable the president will be to the whims of change that are always lurking in the ANC, waiting for any sign of weakness.
Yes, change may finally be coming to South Africa, but is the grass greener on the other side?
In the 2021 local elections, the ANC's share of the ward and proportional vote fell to just 45.6%. While local elections are not always a perfect predictor of general election results due to the unique factors and political parties involved, they provide the most recent authoritative poll of South African voters.
The ANC's electoral performance has not improved since then, and the emergence of the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) party appears to have dashed its hopes of winning more than 50% of the vote.
MK has the support of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as well as the ANC, but it is likely to win a few percent of support that the ANC cannot afford to lose.
Since the emergence of the MK party, opinion polls have placed the ANC in the high 30s to low 40s range. South Africa is a notoriously difficult country to poll. Collecting a sufficient and representative sample is a near-impossible task, and it is also impossible to be sure that respondents are in fact registered voters.
The poll numbers are not good for the ANC, but South African polls have historically tended to underestimate ANC support, especially when appropriate turnout models are taken into account.
Our view is therefore that the ANC is likely to achieve a vote share in the mid to high 40s, and the possibility of winning a 50% majority cannot still be ruled out.
What figure the ANC falls to will be crucial to the story going forward.
A vote share of 47% or more would allow the ANC to relatively easily form a coalition government with one or more smaller parties, resulting in an outcome that is little different to the status quo. It would probably be an acceptable outcome from the ANC's perspective, although the ANC may not concede it for now. President Cyril Ramaphosa would be able to claim it as a victory of sorts, especially if the final result is higher than the results of the 2021 local government elections.
Things get a bit more complicated with an outcome between 45% and 47% (what we currently refer to as our “baseline” scenario): in this scenario, a coalition between the ANC and smaller parties might still be possible, but a larger coalition of several smaller parties would be needed, making it harder to manage and more difficult to maintain stability.
Alternatively, the ANC could make a pact with the IFP, which is part of the opposition's multi-party constitution. IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa has said on multiple occasions that he has no intention of making a pact with the ANC.
But even if the Charter is indeed a coherent political “thing”, loyalty to it will be tested and strained as soon as voting begins: could the IFP be lured into a deal to support the ANC in national politics in exchange for the premiership in the now undecided KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature?
We are not going to deny that. The same can be said about the Democratic Alliance (DA). Despite claiming to be faithful to its charter, the party has long hinted at the idea to voters that it may need to have some sort of relationship with the ANC to “protect” South Africans from a so-called doomsday coalition between the ANC and the EFF.
However, our view is that the ANC's approval rating would have to fall below 45% for the option of a “grand coalition” (ANC and DA), which is what a significant number of people in the business community want, to be considered.
In this scenario, neither the smaller parties nor the IFP alone can raise the ANC's approval rating above 50%. It would be a watershed moment for the ANC, a choice between the red and blue parties.
From the ANC's perspective, which is the lesser evil?
That depends on several things: first, of course, whether the DA or EFF are willing to deal with the ANC and, especially in the latter case, whether they can offer agreeable terms of cooperation.
The EFF has had a tendency to overplay its hand in negotiations in the past, but its leader, Julius Malema, appears to be undergoing something of a strategic reset, with his main goal being to assume a kingmaker role in a coalition government – with rumours that his reward will be the vice presidency.
Another important reserve condition is who would be the ANC president in that scenario, or at least who would hold the most power within the party — in other words, who would be in charge of the ANC's side in the negotiations.
To be clear, if the ANC and Ramaphosa receive less than 40% of the vote, the election outcome will be in jeopardy. Now in his second term as ANC chairperson and having fought what is likely his final general election as chairperson, attention and opportunity within the party will turn to what happens next.
Therefore, if it is Deputy President Paul Mashatile's camp that is at the helm of the ANC at that stage, the red option is the more likely.If a workable deal between the ANC and the DA is likely to materialise, it will surely only be with Ramaphosa at the helm of the ANC.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the decision the ANC would face in this scenario: one that would deeply divide the party and determine its medium-term future.
The word “coalition” is used in this article to describe the form of cooperation between parties necessary to achieve a ruling majority, but there are other forms of power-sharing, both formal and informal, that can have a similar effect.
For example, there may be a minority government elected with 50% of the vote with the support of other parties, but there is no promise of lasting loyalty from that party every time it is voted in parliament.
Any arrangements are unlikely to be as clearly articulated and defined as the need for stable governance requires.
This is mainly due to the short constitutional period of just 14 days between the announcement of the final results by the South African Electoral Commission and the election of a president by the National Assembly – a stark contrast to countries with a long history of coalition governments, where negotiations can take months.
Therefore, if the ANC's approval rating falls below 50%, any government formed in the first few weeks is likely to be unstable, and experience with coalition governments at the local level suggests that it is unlikely to last a full five-year term.
As South Africa grapples with coalition politics without a conducive legal framework and a mature political culture, it is likely to experience instability in the short term.
All nine provinces are governed by majorities: eight by the ANC and one (Western Cape) by the DA.
That's about to change.
The ANC is certain to lose its majority in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and its losses in these two largest provinces are likely to deal a major blow to its national results, increasing pressure to regain majorities in its base in the Eastern Cape and the hinterland.
The ANC still has a slight advantage in Gauteng, but a coalition of constitutional parties could oust it from government. In KwaZulu-Natal, where stability is exceptional, the ANC, IFP and MK will hold things together, but the votes of the DA and EFF will be crucial in the battle for a majority.
Close contests are also expected in the Northern Cape and Free State, where the ANC's majority is becoming increasingly slim. The North West is also not safe for the ANC, but the margins are larger than in other provinces. Majorities should be possible in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, but nothing is certain in an election with so many untested forces, long ballot papers and fast-moving electoral sentiment that predictions are very difficult.
And in the Western Cape, the DA's majority is not safe either.
The DA's support in the province has soared from single digits in the 1990s to peak at 63.3% in 2016 when Patricia de Lille ran for mayor of Cape Town.
The DA's support has been declining slowly since then, to 55.5% in the last state elections in 2019 and 54.2% in the 2021 local elections.
Since then, the Patriotic Alliance in particular has shown signs of exponential growth among working-class voters of colour, a key constituency the DA must retain if it is to maintain its majority in the state.
The Western Cape is therefore also expected to be a tough battle, but even if the DA receives just under 50% of the vote, it should have the necessary partners in the provincial assembly to form a relatively amicable coalition government.
The election will also involve Parliament’s somewhat forgotten second chamber, the National Congress of Provinces (NCOP).
The NCOP has 90 seats in total, 10 for each state, allocated roughly in proportion to the number of votes each state received.
This favours larger parties and parties that perform well in smaller provinces.Our model suggests that even if the ANC loses its majority in the National Assembly by a few percentage points, it could very well retain its majority in the NCOP.
What to make of all this?
This is a very difficult election to predict, with many moving parts. In many ways, South Africa is stepping into the unknown.
The extreme scenario of the ANC achieving a vote share in the low 40% range on the one hand, or even managing to win a majority on the other, cannot yet be completely ruled out.
As always, a lot will depend on turnout on election day: which party gets the most people registered to vote and then the highest percentage of those who show up to vote?
Can the MK party live up to its poll numbers or was it just a smokescreen for support? What about Rise Mzansi, which, while no actual data is available, at least anecdotally appears to be winning over the hearts of the so-called chattering class? Can ActionSA replicate the support it garnered in the handful of municipalities where it decided to run in its first national elections in 2021?
The performance of these new parties may prove crucial in the eventual realignment.
The ANC is expected to lose a significant share of the vote from its 2019 election results, but those votes aren't going anywhere in particular, they're just going to be dispersed across an increasingly competitive and fragmented arena of party politics — a market that will become increasingly crowded with newcomers and independent candidates looking to take advantage of South Africa's extremely low electoral standards.
This is an election that offers an opportunity for something new, something better, but it could also lead to something worse — or a combination of both, as governance and coalitions have changed over the past five tumultuous years. This is in some ways a second transition, or at least the beginning of one.
Five years from now, South African politics may look very different as a new consensus begins to form on the other side.
Richard Calland is visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Governance and founding partner of political risk consultancy the Paternoster Group, where Mike Rowe is Principal Researcher.