South Africa has just completed its seventh national election since late South African president Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid victory in 1994. Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) had won the previous elections with comfortable majorities, from a high of 70 percent in 2004 to a low of 57 percent in 2019. Not this time: the ANC is now in the minority.
Over its three decades of political dominance, the ANC made some progress in providing social welfare, housing, electricity and piped water to millions of people. Although its total vote had fallen in each of the past four polls, it had never declined by more than 5 percentage points. However, this time the ANC lost 17 percentage points, receiving just 40.2 percent of the vote, which means it would have to govern as part of a coalition for the first time.
The ANC controlled eight of the country’s nine provinces. The white-dominated Democratic Alliance (DA) controlled the tourist hub of the Western Cape, with its large mixed-race population, and had been making gains with the black middle class in the industrial heartland of Gauteng.
This time, the ANC lost its majority in two provinces, KwaZulu-Natal (home to one of Africa’s largest ports) and Gauteng, rendering the ANC a rural party based on large majorities in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. Although it still received nearly double the votes of the next largest party — the DA won 21.8 percent — this result represents a stunning reversal for the ANC.
So, what went wrong?
The main cause of the ANC’s precipitous decline is its failure to reverse 32 percent unemployment, with nearly half of the country’s young people out of work. After 350 years of colonialism and apartheid, South Africa remains the world’s most unequal society, with 10 percent of the population controlling 80.6 percent of financial assets.
Widespread corruption, particularly under former South African president Jacob Zuma’s administration (2009 to 2018), has exacerbated the problem, with state capture during this period estimated to have cost the country US$26 billion.
In addition, state-owned enterprises have been looted, reducing the provision of electricity, water and train services. Even though the black middle class grew from 2.2 million in 1993 to 6 million in 2018, there remains a widespread perception that a tiny cohort of black billionaires used their ANC affiliations to benefit from cozy deals with white business.
Crime also represents a major concern, as South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates. The ANC’s support had already tanked at the local level, and before these polls, it governed only two of eight metropolitan municipalities, with the other six run by fractious coalitions.
At the same time, 82-year-old Zuma turned against the party he once dominated. His administration was excoriated by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry Into Allegations of State Capture for grand corruption (which Zuma has denied).
Meanwhile, current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called Zuma’s presidency “eight wasted years.” (Zuma retorted that Ramaphosa had been his deputy for four of those years.)
Having built up the ANC’s comfortable majority on the back of his home province of KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma felt deeply aggrieved. Determined to give the party a bloody nose, he formed the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK, named after the ANC’s paramilitary wing during apartheid) six months ago.
MK said it would replace “constitutional supremacy” with “parliamentary supremacy,” expropriate land without compensation, and nationalize mines and banks.
Remarkably, MK gained 14.6 percent of the national vote, including 45 percent in KwaZulu-Natal, where it would almost certainly form the government. MK also became the official opposition in Mpumalanga as the second-largest party, with 17 percent. The paradox is that the alleged architect of the corruption for which the ANC was punished won one-sixth of the national vote, making MK the country’s third-largest party.
So, with which party would the ANC form a coalition?
Many believe there are only three realistic choices. The first option is the white-dominated, business-friendly DA, which Ramaphosa seems to favor. However, many within the ANC would oppose this.
The DA’s campaign slogan, “Rescue South Africa,” echoes “White Man’s burden” tropes. The DA has also consistently criticized the ANC’s social welfare programs benefiting impoverished black people. A coalition could also pose risks to the DA, as it did to the apartheid era’s ruling National Party, which was swallowed up in an earlier coalition with the ANC.
The second plausible partner is the left-leaning, youth-supported Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which is often caricatured as a “Marxist party” of extremists, having called for uncompensated land redistribution, and the nationalization of mines and banks. The EFF has also consistently maintained an anti-xenophobic Pan-Africanism and raised issues of structural inequality that no other mainstream party has addressed.
An ANC-EFF alliance would be deeply opposed by the powerful white corporate sector and many white voters, with the DA describing it as a “doomsday coalition.” However, it is unlikely that the EFF tail would wag the ANC dog, which won four times as many votes.
The third option could be a return to the 1994 to 1996 government of national unity in which South Africa’s largest parties share portfolios according to their electoral support. There is also speculation about Ramaphosa’s future, with MK already conditioning an unlikely coalition deal on his removal. (South African Vice President Paul Mashatile and ANC Chair Gwede Mantashe were touted as likely successors.)
A president must be chosen by parliament within 14 days, even as this election has raised two serious concerns. The first is that the pathologies of South Africa’s unstable government coalitions at the local level would become a national problem, triggering political paralysis. Second, it is feared that Zuma’s Zulu-led victory in his home province could lead South Africa to an atavistic ethnic politics that revives the violent clashes once stoked by the apartheid regime.
With the death of Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosutho Buthelezi last year, Zuma now towers over the country’s second-largest province like a political colossus.
This election could be the last time that any party gains a majority in a South African national election, the astute South African pundit Steven Friedman said. Coalition politics could be here to stay.
Adekeye Adebajo, a professor and a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa, served on UN missions in South Africa, Western Sahara, and Iraq. He is the author of Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity and The Eagle and the Springbok: Essays on Nigeria and South Africa.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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