The twenty year old post apartheid Democracy of South Africa has just completed a round of local municipal elections across the whole country. These took place at a time when the country is in an existential crisis as to the direction it is going to take. (Blog: South Africa - Emerging Leader or Basket Case). The outcome was that the ruling ANC sustained substantial setbacks in a contest where much was at stake.
The misleading interpretation by the international newspapers is that the outcome reflects that Mandela’s African National Congress, (ANC), has received a setback. The crisp point is that today’s ANC has as in much common with Mandela as Trump's Republican Party has with Abraham Lincoln. The fact is that the ANC have drifted further and further from the principles of the Party Mandela lead to victory in 1994, heralding what he labelled as the “Rainbow Nation”. Now the ANC is wracked with cronyism, wide scale corruption and attempts to pervert justice which climaxed in the most recent scandal where the whole party pitifully defended President Zuma’s gross malfiscience and his disgusting efforts to cover it all up. The latter built himself a residential compound using tax payer money for personal additions. Another recent Zuma impropriety was the firing of a Minister of Finance who appeared to be questioning financial deals. This had international implications with the currency weakening and the country’s credit rating dropping. Dissolutionment and criticism has mounted, the most public face of this being Bishop Tutu, who partnered Mandela in setting South Africa on the road to peaceful change, who claimed that he was praying for a change in government.
To sum up, the upshot of the electoral results is a return to the values and vision that Mandela launched in his new South Africa, not a rebuttal of “his ANC”.
CURRENT CONTEXT OF SOUTH AFRICAN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
It has to be realized what the ANC imprimatur represents and why it requires a massive attitudinal change and an emotional wrench for Black South Africans to abandon it. The ANC for a century has been in the forefront for fighting for the rights of Black Africans. The ANC and the name Nelson Mandela are synonymous. And at the end of the day Nelson Mandela’s ANC vision delivered. So possessive is the ANC of Mandela’s name and legacy that they attacked the opposition Democratic Alliance, (DA), for quoting Mandela as being supportive of the DA policies. They maintained that the DA were distorting reality as, by definition, Mandela supported the ANC. So the current ANC’s argument was that voting against them was akin to voting against Mandela.
Currently South Africa has a highly regionalized system of Government. While these elections have no direct impact on national policy, as they are about the management of local affairs, they do serve as a barometer as to the anger against the present regime. Winning Cape Town and the Cape Province has become a stated priority of the ANC as these are strongholds of the DA. Cape Town is the second largest City in the country and both the City and the Province are highly efficiently run and there is rarely an accusation of corruption. These two legislative entities administrative records are in glaring contrast to those local bodies run by the ANC and the comparison is there for all to see.
Notwithstanding the trampling of the rule of law by the apartheid Nationalist Party Government there was a network of non Governmental opposing forces, other than the Liberation Parties, that contributed to the ultimate non violent change that is still in place. These included a vigorous Press, an activist Church, Trade Unions, non government agencies such as the Institute of Race Relations, the Universities and the judiciary that were as independent as they could be. Mandela and De Klerk’s Constitution also set into motion checks and balances to avoid a repetition of the distortion of democracy into near totalitarianism that had taken place under the Apartheid Nationalist Government. Recently, the system groaning under Zumas’s excesses delivered when the Constitutional Court unanimously ruled President Zuma to have acted unconstitutionally in the matter of his residence and instructed him to refund the State.
It was because of these circumstances that the Municipal Elections took on a larger significance than just focussing on local issues. It also has to be realized that Party affiliation in South Africa means just that. Election contenders are considered to be in full agreement Party policy - no Trumps or Bernies could just join in. The DA, which is a party consisting of nearly all the whites that opposed the apartheid regime as well as an increasing number of South Africans of color.
ELECTION RESULTS
In broad terms the ANC’s share of the vote dropped from 65% to 54%. The DA’s vote share was close on thirty percent which represents spectacular progress especially when it is recalled that its forerunner, the white Democratic Party, garnered less than 2% in the original 1994 Independence Elections. Notwithstanding the fact that the ANC still won by wide numbers in the rural areas the DA gained votes across the geographic spectrum.
The DA gains were most pronounced in the cities. Particularly significant was the strides made in the original home of the ANC, the Eastern Cape. In the Metropolitan city of Port Elizabeth, now renamed Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA triumphed 46% to the ANC’S 41%. The DA’s support grew in more populated Eastern Cape Wards, in some instances increasing their share of the electorate from less than 1% in 2011 to over 40%.
In 7 major metropolitan cities the DA could either govern directly, (2), or were in a favorable position to form coalition governments. It is reckoned by the DA that they were in a position to either govern or form coalitions in 50 other Councils. The biggest blow to the ANC was the shattering of their objective to govern Cape Town were they decreased their share of the vote to 24% in contrast to the DA racking up 66%.
The Marxist Leninist group, Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters, doubled its share of the electorate to 11% and can be the king maker in several of the mayoral races where neither party gained 50% of the vote.
A reality check still leaves the ANC way ahead with a 25% voter lead on its nearest rival, the DA.
POST ELECTION COMMENT AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE
The most immediate external impact was the improvement of the South African currency, the rand. The South African rand which had received a pounding following Zuma’s attempt to replace the Minister of Finance with an ignorant yes man, moved up fourteen percent against the dollar in the days following the announcement of the results.
As might be expected, Mmusi Mamaine, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, (DA), put a positive spin on the results hailing them as a tipping point in South African politics. The key point he emphasized was that the myth that the DA was a white man’s party had been dispelled. He claimed to be very optimistic about the future. He believed that the electorate had opted for change. Zuma, for once gracious, said that the elections illustrated that democracy was alive and well in South Africa.
John Kane - Berman, of the Institute of Race Relations, that veteran of so many struggles, believed that the ANC spell had been broken and that the drubbing was more profound than the figures indicated. While the ANC had favored Black Africans in jobs and welfare their record of corruption and failure to deliver to the average African worker had taken its toll. Unemployment was on the rise and the ANC ’s failure to improve the situation had shaken their previously loyal constituencies.
There is a consensus that this election was, in large part, a referendum on President Zuma. One commentator even likened his benefit to his opposition to that of Trump for Hillary.
While the DA’s momentum cannot be denied, realistically the ball is still in the ANC’s court. If the powers that be in the ANC’s headquarters in Luthuli House cannot see the writing on the wall it will only get worse. All eyes will be on current Vice President, ANC’S Cyril Ramaphosa who was Mandela’s choice as his successor almost twenty years ago. He was a pioneer for the rights for the worker, being head of the Trade Union Movement COSATU. But a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then. Ramaphosa went into business and became a remarkably rich man and there is an undercurrent that he is part of the elite that this electoral protest was all about.
Whichever way this is spliced South Africa has passed a very important test and this augurs very well for its future. Mandela has to be smiling from a distance that all is not lost even though his ANC has lost its way.
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