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ELECTION RESULTS AND THE VOTER DYNAMICS FACING THE COALITION GOVERNMENT

Address by Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Department of International Relations, Witwatersrand University, at the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Coalition Government Conference, 12 July 2024

 

Thank you very much, Christo (if I may) and Mrs de Klerk and to all of my fellow speakers and to all gathered here today. It is wonderful to be with you here to engage and join in dialogue at this fascinating, sometimes pantomimic, but always interesting time in our country’s democracy.

I have two prime purposes today: The first is to reflect on the election results and to try and interpret those results perhaps beyond the traditional tropes that have already begun to emerge around them, to try to distil some insight in those results that maybe goes beyond the obvious news cycle. And then, to try and link that to the purpose for which we gather here today, which is to assess the opportunities and threats that lie pregnant in this political moment.

To begin first with questions of what actually just happened politically, I’d like to focus firstly on what happened with the political parties and then to look at the question of turnout and to try and make sense of what I think was a breathtaking and paradoxical election outcome. Let’s just take a step back and look at what really happened here, because I don’t think we’ve fully digested the political earthquake that we have just witnessed.

The ANC fell – and I’ve seen these numbers actually misquoted in many places – from 57% of the electorate or of the national vote to below 40%. It’s actually 39,7% of the national electorate and that’s what happens when you combine the national ballot and the regional ballot, which is what has produced the parliamentary allocation. The ANC is actually officially now not just below 50, which was the talk of the election, but indeed below 40 and now sits at 39% of the national electorate in terms of its support.

For an ANC to be below 40 is one thing, but perhaps even more interestingly, I think is the provincial and I would argue even the local picture. (Caveat entered about the inapplicability to analogise between local and national elections.) Because if we look at the provincial picture, we get an even more breathtaking perspective in my view: The first is that when we went into this election, the ANC comfortably held seven provinces. It was on a knife’s edge in one, which is the province in which we sit today, which is Gauteng and it was far behind in the Western Cape. So, it was comfortable in seven, it was on a knife’s edge in one with a slim majority and far behind in the Western Cape. That picture in terms of the provincial balance of power has shifted dramatically. Where do we stand now? The ANC is far behind in the Western Cape still, but it’s also far behind in Gauteng, which was on a knife’s edge. It is now on a knife’s edge in Mpumalanga, in the Free State, in the Northern Cape where it actually lost its majority. And it’s only now comfortable in three provinces from seven. It’s comfortable in the North West, it is comfortable in Limpopo and it is comfortable in the Eastern Cape.

So really, provincially speaking, which I think has been one of the lost narratives of this election, the ANC has gone from dominating provincial politics to only being comfortable in a minority of provinces; three. Having to negotiate or be very precarious in the remainder and actually losing outright. And of course, the situation in KwaZulu-Natal was disastrous.

So, when we try to appreciate the extent to which the ANC has lost its dominance, not only should we appreciate that it’s fallen below 40, but also that the provincial calculus has shifted significantly and dramatically.

Finally, to try and accentuate the importance of what has happened at a local level: If you read the election results in the local metros. (Now, of course, the elections aren’t exactly the same, but of course, we have a big election coming up. I’m sorry to bring up big elections again, but those of you who aren’t suffering yet from election fatigue, we have another election coming up in just under two years and the talk will be about the metros and the extent to which the ANC will be able to retain control in big cities.) The ANC in one scenario stands to lose all of them. The only metro that is probably safe is Buffalo City or East London, but every other metro has already either fallen, or is very close to falling. And the one that I would look at particularly in 2026 is Mangaung in the Free State, where the ANC is precarious provincially, but now stands also on the precipice of potentially losing that important city.

So, to take a step back, much of the discussion has been that the ANC has fallen below 50, but in actual fact, I think the deeper reflection is that it’s actually fallen below 40 and it has lost majority control – over being comfortable in all provinces – and indeed faces a very tough local government election given the results that emerged in metros.

Having said that, on the opposition front, you have a DA which has increased slightly I think from around 21% to 22%, you have an EFF which has gone from 10,8% to 9,5%, contracting slightly. You have, obviously, a surging MK party. I’ll pick up on some of those opposition trends when I come to the reflection on the threats and the opportunities and conclusion.

So that’s just an attempt to very briefly interpret the earthquake of the last month. But there are interesting questions about democratic participation which emerge from turnout that I think are also important as we continue our discussions today. And I’d like to again try and simplify and crystallize the message on turnout that we got in this election because again, I’m not convinced it’s been sufficiently canvassed in mainstream media.

One of the paradoxes of this election for me is that it was billed as one of the most consequential moments in our democracy – and it felt important – but we had the lowest turnout that we’ve ever had before. So at the same time as we went into this consequential moment, where it was actually possible that the ANC majority could wither, we saw the least participation in our national elections that we have ever seen, and there’s an interesting paradox there, possibly a history there, as to why at a time of incredible political importance, that message couldn’t be translated into greater voter enthusiasm.

And so, we had a turnout of 58% of the electorate, but what I think is probably more interesting is to look at: how is the voting-age population shifting and moving; how is the registered population shifting and moving; and how is the number of people who actually vote shifting and moving. And it’s quite interesting.

If we compare 2019 on the one hand with 2024 on the other hand, we get again a paradoxical situation. The population is increasing, so the voting-age population is increasing. In 2019, it was about 35 million, and now we sit with a voting-age population of about 42 million. The number of registered voters is also increasing along with the population, so for the first time, we for the first time crossed the 27 million mark of registered voters. So out of the 42 million who can vote, only 27 million have registered to vote, but that’s more than ever before. However, the number of people who actually voted was less in real terms in terms of the actual number of people who voted and in terms of turnout than even in 2019.

So, we’ve got a growing population, a registered population, but a declining voting population. And I think that should give us all pause for concern. Exactly why that’s the case, I’m not sure, but in an election that was billed as consequential and with a bigger registered population, why did so few people vote? Was it to do with the new electoral system and the changes and the bureaucratic inefficiencies that emerged on the day of voting and the lack of clarity around the three ballots and where you could vote? Maybe, but we’ve seen this trend of turnout declining even before the changes in our electoral system and so, it’s at least mysterious, to me, why in such an important election, when more people registered, fewer voted. And the numbers can be complicated, but I think that’s the easiest simplification of looking at: how many people there, how many registered people there are and how many people voted. And how those dynamics are shifting over time.

When we come to questions of turnout as well, there is an interesting question and a paradox for me which I’d like to put on the table too: And that is that black voters are – even compared to the national average – turning out in lesser numbers. Again, I find this strange because of the blood, sweat and tears that went into securing the right to vote for black South Africans and why it seems to me in our democracy, despite an ever-growing list of political parties and political offerings, black South Africans, particularly young black South Africans, are actually not taking the decision to vote in disproportionate numbers to their counterparts in other racial and cultural communities in South Africa.

I find that interesting and I find that a question that we need to deeply interrogate and understand. I think it’s even more interesting given the number of political parties which purport to speak on behalf of a black electorate that the black electorate is dwindling even in comparison to 2019.

What I think is equally interesting is the energized white electorate in comparison: The turnout differential when you look at voting districts which have majority white voters versus majority black voters is something like a 16% difference. To crystallize that in simple terms, in the white electorate, we have around a 70% turnout, whereas in the black electorate, we have about a 55% turnout. Now, of course, the white electorate is much smaller than the black electorate, but the fact of the matter is that there are therefore disproportionate effects in those different electorates given the turnout differentials. I think it’s important for our country, given our history, to understand what that means, try to figure that out and really get to the bottom of why black South Africans are not turning out to vote given how important the right to vote for black South Africans was purported to be. So that’s something that is occupying my mind at the moment.

I was asked, very skilfully by Christo, mostly to reflect on election results, probably for fear that I would veer into radical political analysis. For some reason there’s this view that I’m some kind of ultra-radical Marxist loon, but I assure you it’s not that interesting. That’s my best attempt to try today in our discussions to distil, simplify, outline and interpret what we have just witnessed in terms of election results.

I would now like to turn in the seven or so minutes remaining to what this now means in terms of threats and opportunities for our political landscape. I have very mixed feelings about this political moment and I think the more honest position is probably one of mixed feelings. I’ve seen hysterical swings from euphoric to hysterical forms of interpretation and I think we’re somewhere in between euphoria and hysteria right now.

Let me start with the opportunities because I do think they are present at this moment. The first opportunity for me is one of greater accountability. I think one of the greatest problems of post-constitutional South Africa, or post-democratic South Africa, has been an inability to hold the ANC government to account, because no matter what anyone tried in civil society, or the media, or even in Parliament, the ANC ultimately was the only political game in town. And in this moment, not only does the ANC have soul-searching to do, but opposition parties have soul-searching to do to the extent that they are able to make sure that any government becomes more transparent and more accountable. I think the flexibility for mechanisms of accountability has opened: It’s opened in Parliament, it’s opened in the national discourse and the ANC is unable at this stage to now steamroll – well, it remains to be seen, but it’s less possible for the ANC to do so. I think that opens up new avenues for civil society, for opposition politics and for citizens to ensure greater accountability. I’ve been very interested in just the number of leaks that we have already seen in the opening weeks of this GNU, which tell us that information at the very least is now going to become more available to us and we’re going to know much better what’s been going on in this government. And again, I think that opens opportunities for accountability.

However, I see a worry in the outcome, because, again paradoxically, the ANC lost everything in this election and gained everything in the negotiations, in my view. So, it lost the elections and it won the negotiations. We have a situation in which we have a much less legitimate ANC that holds a disproportionate amount of power. I think that puts us in a situation in which if the ANC makes mistakes, the likelihood of a social backlash against an illegitimate ANC, which nonetheless still holds a lot of power, is certainly present in this moment.

Maybe to reflect on opposition politics, to the extent that the EFF and MK party have been left out of this governing arrangement, one of the threats that I do see on the horizon is them having an incentive for the government to fail rather than to succeed and what it means when the ANC only has 39% of the vote holds a disproportionate share of power and has isolated a quarter of the electorate with an incentive for government failure. That will clearly be a circle that the coalition government will have to square. How even in opposition politics there is still nonetheless some kind of national agenda which unites parties that sure appear to be disparate in their ideologies, but if South Africa teaches us anything, it’s that ideologies are never as disparate as they appear in their rhetoric. How do we ensure that the incentive to spoil does not supersede the incentive to succeed, even in a robust democracy where accountability is required? That seems to me to be a crucial threat and challenge that has to be overcome.

I’ll end with two final challenges:

The first being the prospect of endless discourse, dialogue. I hasten to add that this is what we’re doing here, and there’s nothing wrong with talking, but talking displaces action, and if there has been one failure I think of democratic South Africa, it is that we have often preferred to talk and dialogue and reach consensus before prioritizing urgent action. I have no problem with calls for a national dialogue; I think dialogue is great, and I do it all day on my various platforms, but it should not come at the expense of action. Only dialogue with action will work; dialogue which displaces action will be, not only unsuccessful, it will be counterproductive because it will displace anger, which will then come back tenfold because nothing has actually happened in the dialogue. I do see this dialogue needing to be directed very firmly and boldly towards something changing because there’s no point in having this dialogue about something needing to change in the country and at the end doing nothing, having dialogued. Presumably, we need to dialogue because something needs to change and the subject of that dialogue is what is that something. But the outcome cannot be that, oh, it turns out we think the status quo is what should always have stayed.

The final threat that I see, which is linked to the possibility of dialogue displacing action, is gridlock and endless consultation within the government. At a time when the South African electorate is begging the political class to do something: to be a decisive act, what we may see is a decision to take a step back to consult, to never exactly come to one decision or the other, to prevaricate and to procrastinate. Again, I think that will not only be undesirable; it will be counterproductive, because it will have spillover effects into the credibility of coalition politics in and of itself.

This coalition government has a great task on its hands. It needs to convene a national conversation urgently while it acts and it needs to make sure that despite the political diversity, it acts decisively and doesn’t get lost in endless consultations, forms of gridlock and non-action, that I think can only make this a false dawn rather than a true dawn. I am veer clear ever of using the term “New Dawn,” so that’s an attempt firstly to survey the political landscape, survey some of the threats and the opportunities that present themselves before us and hopefully lay the ground for an interesting day of discussions which I look forward to with all of you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my insights.