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There are exciting times ahead!
As we all know, we’re headed for a national election next year, whereafter all the seats in the House of Assembly and the provincial parliaments will be refilled with many old faces and some new, and whereafter the NCOP will also be re-peopled.
What’s gonna happen? Who’s gonna win, and who will lose?
Let’s start with where we are now.
The last general election, that of 2019, saw the voting population of South Africa vote as follows: the ANC got 57,5% of the total of valid votes cast, the DA 20,8%, and the EFF 10,8%, giving these top three parties almost 90% of all votes. They were followed, some considerable way behind, by the IFP (3,4%), the FF+ (2,4%) – we are now at about 96% of all votes – and the ACDP (0,9%). Thereafter followed six parties with enough votes each to secure two seats in the House (in total, they got 2,2% of the vote), three parties winning one seat each, and 35 further parties securing, in total, 1,6% of the vote, but none of them securing a seat in the House.
Then followed the 1 November 2021 local government elections. If one aggregates the totals of votes cast for each of the parties in this election, the ANC secured only 47,5% of the vote, the DA 19,8% and the EFF 10,5%. All three were down from 2019. The vote secured by the “Top Three” in total dropped to 78%. They were followed by a resurgent IFP (6,3%) and a static FF+ (2,3%) and ACDP (0,7%). Two new faces appeared, ActionSA (1,8%) and the Patriotic Alliance (0,8%). Twenty-eight other parties filled up the field, winning in the process nearly 10% of the vote and numerous council seats all over the country.
Elections are by far the best opinion polls of voters’ political preferences, for sure, but between elections we try to make sense of the latest swings with the use of reliable opinion polls. The last five opinion polls point to the following:
*August 2022 – Social Research Foundation: ANC 52%, DA 25%, EFF 11% and ActionSA 6%
*October/November 2022 – Brenthurst Foundation: ANC 48%, DA 25%, EFF 11% and ActionSA 4%
*November 2022 – Rivonia Circle: ANC 41%, DA 18% and EFF 15%
*December 2022 – IPSOS (just before the ANC’s Nasrec): ANC 45%, DA 16%, EFF 13% and IFP 4%
*March 2023 – Social Research Foundation: ANC 52%, DA 21% and EFF 6%
Alright, that’s a mass of facts and figures. Sorry. Now, we must look at the intentions of the three major parties as they head off to 2024.
Firstly, the EFF.
While they have not stated this intention (or any other), there has been press speculation – and the EFF’s current actions support this – that the EFF foresees the following scenario: that the election of 2024 will not supply the ANC with a majority, and that they can only reach 50,1% through a coalition deal with the EFF. The price of this deal is the departure of Ramaphosa as president and the installation of the more pliable Mashatile, with Julius as deputy. Then, Mashatile is to be dispensed with and we have, mirabile dictu, President Julius.
This remarkable nightmare relies upon three uncertain steps: Ramaphosa being hounded out of office (this the EFF – happily aided by the media – are now determinedly pursuing, although the outcome is still somewhat distant); the election offering the ANC no other option but a coalition with the EFF (unlikely – there are always other parties interested in cabinet and ambassadorial posts); and, finally, Mashatile departing and the voters of the National Assembly then electing Julius (inconceivable). Hmmmmm.
The DA’s scenario is not as spectacular, but is as fanciful. Their “Moonshot Pact” (the wording is borrowed from the economist Mazzucato) is a post-election coalition with anybody and everybody – except the ANC and the EFF. In today’s parliament, that would be a DA-led coalition with 12 other parties, and they together now have 127 seats, 74 short of a majority. Plainly, there is some work to be done here before Steenhuizen can announce, “A small step for a politician, but a giant step for a fractious coalition”.
The ANC policy is to scramble to regather its stay-at-home and strayed voters, to pass the magic number (50,1%) again all on its own. Of the three scenarios, this is the most possible, although it, too, has enormous difficulties. But the dismal 2021 result was during the height of the Zondo Commission, which has now somewhat dissipated, and the opinion polls quoted above do show a resurgent ANC. And the possibility of President Julius is powerful motivation for Mbalula and his team.
And what are the on-the-ground dynamics affecting the big parties now?
The DA is being hacked into by the FF+ in the white community; by the PA, GOOD and a variety of small community parties in the DA’s heartland, with the coloured voters; and by ActionSA, which is plainly attracting the DA’s conservative, anti-ANC black voters. And it has returned much of its 2016 black support to the ANC. The DA plainly has difficulties.
The opinion polls quoted show that the EFF’s growth has slowed or even halted, and outside of Gauteng and Mpumalanga they hardly exist. They have almost no support over the age of 55, and remain ghettoed in the community of urban black youth – which is the fastest growing cohort in society, but also the slowest to register to vote.
ActionSA has a fragile presence in few metros (I’ll bet that more than three quarters of all voters in KZN and the Eastern Cape have never heard of them), and also has coherence problems.
And the ANC?
The ANC is losing ground to the EFF in that vital community, black youth. Young people worldwide are not interested in attending monthly meetings at which elderly people give rambling talks on the proud history of their movement – young people want action, protests, burning tyres, walking on and over the lines of legality. This the EFF offers, while the ANC Youth League is moribund, conceding this cohort of voters to the EFF.
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The ANC is losing ground to the EFF in that vital community, black youth. Young people worldwide are not interested in attending monthly meetings at which elderly people give rambling talks on the proud history of their movement – young people want action, protests, burning tyres, walking on and over the lines of legality. This the EFF offers, while the ANC Youth League is moribund, conceding this cohort of voters to the EFF.
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Hoping that the Zondo horror and the Ace era are both off-screen by now, and that Mbalula has an experienced grip on elections and the electorate, the ANC appears to have abandoned its minority communities, and consolidated in the rural world of older black/African people whose families have long histories of ANC membership and loyalty. Will this be enough to provide it with 50,1% in 2024?
We do not have a set of perfect choices awaiting us on the 2024 ballot sheets. Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi are not up for election. We must choose between parties headed up by Ramaphosa, Steenhuizen and Malema. That is a restricted and not very exciting slate. That means that every vote is now unreliable.
Apart from the DA’s “Moonshot Pact” and the EFF’s “President Julius-by-the-backdoor” (both extremely unlikely) and the “ANC full majority” scenario (more likely, but also not nearly assured), there are three other scenarios that could play out after 2024.
The first is three things: the ANC being the biggest party after 2024, but not big enough to govern by itself. It refuses the conditions that Julius demands and can’t tie up a stable, durable majority with the smaller parties. It must then govern on a day-to-day basis, getting different support on every item, which support of course comes at a price. This is a possible scenario, offering very unstable politics.
The second scenario is the most likely: the ANC is the biggest party after 2024, but lacks a clear majority. Again, it refused Julius’s nonsense. Through the tantalising offer of jobs, ambassadorships and cabinet posts, it attracts enough support from a host of “smalls” to get to 50,1%. This scenario, again imperfect, is the most likely of the six I have outlined. Let’s see.
The third scenario is extremely unlikely; in fact, as politics is now, it is impossible. That is an ANC-DA coalition or pact. South Africa has an excellent body of law, all put in place by the ANC – it has shown that it can legislate. And, in the Western Cape, the DA has shown that it can operate very effectively within the law. That makes these two parties natural partners. Today’s endless squabbling and desperate coalition-making with small parties, all of whom have shown themselves to be unreliable and self-seeking, is both unseemly and destructive for South Africa. And the two big parties are not hopelessly dissimilar in policy. But personality attacks and long years of followers loathing the “other party” suggest that this, the best outcome for South Africa, is, at present, not on.
So, we have six post-2024 scenarios. I list them in order of possibility.
*An ANC-DA coalition. Not possible now.
*A DA “Moonshot”. Nope. Voter shifts needed are too big for reality.
*“President Julius-by-the-back-door”. Dumb the ANC might be, but it is not that stupid.
*ANC is the biggest party post-2024, but needs partners for governing. It tries to handle issues day by day, accumulating partners depending on the issue. Possible, but very unstable.
*ANC wins a full majority. Possible, but much work still needed.
*The ANC pulls together a coalition of small parties, by conceding cabinet posts and much else. The most possible of the options, but certainly not assured.
Our politics has never been as fluid as it is now; the 2024 election outcome is the most unpredictable since 1994. Exciting times. So much happens so quickly today. This first assessment will need updating in about six months. See you then.
Also read:
Our poisoned land: living in the shadows of Zuma’s keepers deur Jacques Pauw – ’n resensie
Die gewaande Suid-Afrikaanse wonderwerk: tyd vir bestekopname