by Nontando Guwa-Ngamlana

The third democratic elections in South Africa have come and gone after months of intense campaigning by political parties. In an attempt to analyse the election results, it is important for one to look back into the events that built-up to and influenced the elections.

The 52nd National Conference of the African National Congress (ANC) in Polokwane in December 2007 is notably the ground on which bitter rivalry over the leadership of the ANC reached a climax. By the end of that conference, two clear factions within the ruling party had emerged, a Zuma and a Mbeki faction. The ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) failed to bridge the gap between these two camps and divisions within the party grew deeper.

A few weeks after the Polokwane Conference, the NPA re-charged the ANC’s then newly-elected president Jacob Zuma for corruption. This move intensified support for Zuma by the ANC’s Youth and Women’s leagues, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). An intense campaign to defend Zuma resumed with the Youth League and the trade unions vowing to “kill for Zuma”. For the greater part of 2008, the agenda of the ruling party was hijacked by the “bring Zuma back to power” campaign.

A court judgement, which found that government prosecutors mishandled their corruption case against Jacob Zuma, resulted in the ANC’s NEC decision to recall Thabo Mbeki from the office of President. This was done a few months before Mbeki’s official term of office came to an end. The move to oust Mbeki was seen as a successful ‘comeback’ campaign by Zuma and a clear defeat of Mbeki. Mbeki’s ousting had little to do with his performance and the policies that he had put in place, and more to do with the internal conflicts within the ANC.

The Mbeki supporters within the ANC, and other people who believed that the ANC had changed from the liberation movement that prioritized the needs of poor South Africans, moved to form the Congress of the People (COPE). COPE emerged as an opposition party and within just a few months of its formation it was already on the ground campaigning with all other parties and in fact emerged among the strongest parliamentary parties alongside the Democratic Alliance (DA).

In the wake of the turbulence within the ruling ANC and the emergence of COPE, the role of opposition parties has taken on a crucial dimension. The emergence of COPE as an opposition party has shifted the balance in South Africa’s opposition politics.

Since the first democratic elections in 1994, South Africans showed almost similar levels of support for the major political parties. The nature of voting outcomes had been ‘racialised’, resulting in the continued electoral dominance of the ANC over weak and fragmented opposition parties. This raised concerns that a genuine multiparty competition in the country would remain limited and the potential for the alternation of power through the ballot box substantially diminished.

Another issue is that opposition parties have often been more concerned with scoring political points rather than dealing with real issues affecting South Africans. They have failed in many instances to speak together with one voice.

It became apparent during the most recent election that there was little or no shift of allegiance across party lines by racial and other social groups. The ANC remained the largest party, with a little less than a two-third majority, having probably lost some votes to COPE and the DA.

The DA has been re-launched as a party ready to govern, rather than a party content to simply fill the opposition benches, with Hellen Zille assuming a Hillary Clinton style of campaigning throughout the election-campaigning period. Her ‘do-away-with-Zuma-and-go-with-me’ strategy didn’t appeal much to most black South Africans and did not seem to portray a party that understood its role as the largest opposition. The DA won 16% of the national share of the vote, remaining the “official” opposition party with COPE coming second at around 7.5% of the national vote.

COPE could also lay its claim as a significant opposition party as it is the second largest party in five provinces (Northern Cape, North West, Limpopo, Free State and Eastern Cape). The smaller parties, especially the Independent Democrats (ID), Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), United Democratic Movement (UDM) and others have all done poorly in this election, relative to performances in previous ones. What is becoming clear is that to strengthen opposition politics in South Africa, opposition parties will have to come together. The ID leader, Patricia de Lille, showed keen interest in considering such a suggestion.

If opposition parties in South Africa indeed came together as suggested by the ID, a likely scenario is that the Freedom Front Plus would probably be more likely to move towards the DA. COPE is more likely to win the ID, UDM, PAC, and AZAPO. It is not clear where IFP votes would go.

The once powerful IFP appears with the latest results to be in a seemingly irreversible decline in popularity, from the highs of the 1990s which saw the party secure a 10.5% share of the national vote in 1994. COPE’s establishment appeared to generate a great deal of excitement, particularly among voters who broadly speaking were interested in a non-racial opposition with demonstrated political capital and credentials.

The ANC’s loss of the Western Cape to the DA points to a number of things, most of all that it has limited support among minority groups such as coloured and white South Africans. The Western Cape electorate displayed a true example of voting on racial lines that had always been suspected. In Khayelitsha, the ANC led for the provincial vote in 77 voting Districts in the township while COPE and the DA trailed far behind. While in Mitchell’s Plain, a predominantly low/middle income coloured area, the ANC was far behind the DA.

The ANC won the national election by a comfortable margin of 65.9%, falling short of its 69.69% win in 2004. This means that the ANC failed to secure a two-thirds majority that would have allowed it to unilaterally amend the Constitution. This happened despite the fact that there were 2 million additional voters in the 2009 election. Now that the votes have been tallied, it is clear that there have been key changes in the political landscape.

- The ANC has maintained its majority of the national vote, although its share has been diminished somewhat, and more substantial declines are evident in a number of provinces
- The opposition vote has undoubtedly been consolidated between the largest parties: the DA has substantially grown its share of the national vote, while COPE performed well, claiming third position after only just a few months of its existence
- However smaller parties have experienced a decline in actual ballots cast, in the share of both the national and provincial votes and in seats in legislatures.

As we move past the election with a flamboyant President Zuma, key questions remain unanswered:

- Would the ANC ever again win more than two-thirds of the national vote?
- Will the voting public display an electoral appetite for the opposition? and
- How would the emergence of COPE shape the opposition landscape in future?

References
Inter Press Service News Agency; Christi van der Westhuizen; May 07, 2009
Lefo-Everet; Misra-Dexter; Sylvester: IDASA, April 2009
Mail & Guardian April 24, 25, 28 and May 1 2009
Mark Turpin blog; April 30, 2009
www.globalinsight.com

The Transformer Jun-Jul 2009