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Elsewhere in Focus: South Africa After Elections 2024 [1]

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Date: 2024-06-26  

Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Elsewhere in Focus. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).

As we discussed in last week’s Elsewhere in Focus, the African National Congress (ANC), Nelson Mandela’s party that led the country out of apartheid (legally and constitutionally though not spatially or economically) dropped to a 40% vote share in the elections that concluded on 29th May 2024. ANC now needed to form a coalition to form the government. What is the update there?

Let us read about it in this edition of Elsewhere in Focus.

South Africa: After Elections 2024

ANC in Coalition

Finding themselves unable to form a government on their own with their 40% vote share, the ANC talked to many parties with the idea of forming a coalition government. The right wing, white-led Democratic Alliance, the major opposition party in South Africa that came in second with 22% of the vote share, seems to have been the only major party that evinced interest. Jacob Zuma’s party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, that came in third in the election with 14% vote share demanded that ANC remove Cyril Ramaphosa before he would join them. Clearly, that was a non-starter. The supposedly Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led by Julius Malema that came in fourth (worse than 2019) with 9.51% vote share said that it won’t enter an alliance with the Democratic Alliance (DA). Plus, they want to nationalise industries and redistribute farm lands, which also seem to be not something that the ANC wanted.

What then was the result of all these demands and caveats?

ANC under Cyril Ramaphosa decided to form a Government of National Unity (GNU) with the DA and sundry other small parties.

The name GNU is a call back to Nelson Mandela’s government of 1994, which had the National Party that brought in apartheid along with the Zulu Nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as coalition partners. Richard Savage’s report for the Guardian gives the details (14 June 2024).

South Africa’s African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance have agreed to form a coalition in which the former liberation movement and the pro-business party will set aside their rivalry in an historic governance pact. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s centrist preferences ultimately won out over more leftwing factions of the ANC that wanted to strike a deal with breakaway parties that back nationalisation and seizing land from white farmers. The deal was struck amid criticisms that the DA favours the interests of South Africa’s white minority, something it denies.

Of course, DA denies racism but is against affirmative action for Black people and Black empowerment programs. And a National Health Insurance.

The free-market-supporting DA, which received almost 22% of the vote, will back Ramaphosa’s election by lawmakers for a second term, while its MPs will also vote for an ANC speaker of parliament in return for the position of deputy speaker, its leader, John Steenhuisen, told a press briefing. “Today, the DA becomes a party of national government,” Steenhuisen said, after the legislators were sworn in at a convention centre in Cape Town, while the parliament buildings are still being renovated after a fire in 2022. “Through their votes, the people have made it clear that they do not want any one party to dominate our society. The people have also told us that the time for finger pointing is over and that the time for a new politics of collaboration and problem solving has arrived.” An ANC-DA coalition was favoured by large businesses and international investors, with Ramaphosa expected to continue to try pushing forward policies such as allowing the private sector to generate renewable energy, which has contributed to a fall in power cuts. Negotiations will continue after Friday on policies and cabinet positions, Steenhuisen said, adding that the two-week period after election results that the constitution mandates for the election of a president was not long enough to reach a full coalition agreement. A “statement of intent” signed by the ANC and DA includes a commitment to a “merit-based, non-partisan and professional civil service”. The DA has long criticised the ANC appointment of its supporters to public sector positions, known in South Africa as “cadre deployment”, claiming it fosters corruption. Two smaller parties, the Inkatha Freedom party (IFP), a Zulu nationalist party, and the Patriotic Alliance (PA), which wants to bring back the death penalty and deport illegal immigrants, have also said they will join the government. The inclusion of the IFP, which received 3.8% of the vote, is seen as a way to deflect criticism of the ANC for working with the white-led DA. The PA, led by the self-described reformed bankrobber Gayton McKenzie, got 2% of the vote and has its support base in South Africa’s Coloured communities.

Thanks to the GNU coalition, Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected as President again in 2024 as Gerald Imray and Mogomotsi Magome report for the Associated Press (15 June 2024).

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected by lawmakers for a second term on Friday, after his party struck a dramatic late coalition deal with a former political foe just hours before the vote. Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, won convincingly in Parliament against a surprise candidate who was also nominated — Julius Malema of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters. Ramaphosa received 283 votes to Malema’s 44 in the 400-member house. The 71-year-old Ramaphosa secured his second term with the help of lawmakers from the country’s second biggest party, the Democratic Alliance, and some smaller parties. They backed him in the vote and got him over the finish line following the ANC’s loss of its long-held majority in a landmark election two weeks ago that reduced it to 159 seats in Parliament.

The alliance did not stop with the DA and IFP. As per South Africa Broadcasting Cooperation’s SABC News, ten parties are now part of the GNU (23 June 2024).

The African National Congress (ANC) has announced that ten of the eighteen parties with seats in the National Assembly have signed the Government of National Unity (GNU) Statement of Intent. The parties are the ANC, DA, Patriotic Alliance, IFP, GOOD, FF Plus, UDM, Rise Mzansi and Al Jama-ah. The ANC says the 10 parties secured over 70% of the vote in the 2024 elections thus ensuring broad representative and a strong mandate to govern. In a statement, it says any further parties wishing to join the GNU will be subject to Clause 24 of the Statement of Intent which states that there be discussion and agreement amongst the existing parties, whenever new parties want to be part of the GNU. With the first phase of the GNU complete, the ANC says engagements with the signatory parties on the formation of the Executive have started, with President Cyril Ramaphosa expected to announce appointments in the coming days.

The Mail & Guardian’s Emsie Ferreira reported that the discussions between ANC and DA regarding cabinet positions is seeing tentative progress after hitting a roadblock (25 June 2024).

Negotiations between the ANC and the Democratic Alliance towards a government of national unity (GNU) continued on Monday, after hitting the rough in recent days over the number of posts in the executive that would go to the DA. A source close to the process confirmed that a meeting took place on Monday between chief negotiators from the two parties, saying it yielded some progress towards resolving a deadlock on cabinet positions that has persisted for days. Another simply said the talks were ongoing. Other sources also suggested the historic process was not out of the woods yet. The standoff between the ANC and the DA has delayed not only President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of his new cabinet, but prevented Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi from naming his provincial executive. It concerns the number of key positions the DA should be given in return for entering into government with the ANC, and sparing the party a tie-up with the Economic Freedom Fighters and former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party, now the third biggest in the land. Sources on Monday confirmed the authenticity of a leaked letter in which Helen Zille, the DA’s former leader and current chairperson of its federal council, put across a demand of 11 critical positions in return for staying the course.

There is also news today that the DA wants 12 cabinet positions or there would be no deal. Since this news keeps changing everyday, it may be different tomorrow.

So, that is the basic lay of the land. Now, let us get into the analysis.

What Awaits South Africa with the GNU?

The DA is against affirmative action. It is also as I said mostly a party of the white people and Asians and biracial people as you can see from Wedaeli Chibelushi’s profile of party leader John Steenhuisen for the BBC (07 May 2024).

When asked last year whether the DA's image as a "fundamentally white party" was a structural issue, Mr Steenhuisen told the BBC: "People are looking beyond race towards competence, [the] ability to get things done and being able to deliver - that's the game in town and that's going to be the game in the next election." He opposes race quotas in the workplace - introduced by the ANC in a bid to close South Africa's racial economic gap - calling them "crude" and unsuccessful. On Mr Steenhuisen's approach to racial issues, South African political analyst Richard Calland says: "He comes across as someone who is privileged, but unconscious, unaware of the context, unaware of the lived reality for most South Africans." This makes it hard for him to extend his appeal to black voters, who are still far more likely to be living in poverty than the white population. South Africa was the world's most unequal country in 2022, a situation partly driven by race, according to the World Bank.

As per a report from Joe Bavier and Wendell Roelf of Reuters, DA’s administration of Cape Town may seem better superficially but it has hurt its most marginalised Black inhabitants (02 June 2024).

In contrast to South Africa's broader economic stagnation, crisis-level unemployment and crumbling infrastructure, Western Cape - the province the DA has controlled since 2009 - has done measurably better. It boasts the country's lowest jobless rate. Its main city Cape Town is a major tourist destination. Even the country's notorious power cuts are less severe. According to one opinion survey , opens new tab , Western Cape and Cape Town are viewed as by far South Africa's best governed province and major city. "It's better than the other provinces," said Lauran Musgrave, 31, a Cape Town resident and DA supporter. "They are the guys that should be ruling the whole country." But in a city that remains heavily segregated - a lingering legacy of apartheid's legal separation of the races - not everyone agrees. Black tour guide Theo Makhaphela, 39, frequents both the immaculately maintained seafront and poor crime-ravaged townships where the army has in the past been deployed to quell deadly gang violence. "They talk a good game. But on the ground, if you're from here, you know what's on," he said. Solly Malatsi, a Black DA leader, says the party is making progress with Black voters. "Our support among Black voters is on an upward trajectory," he said, claiming the party had improved its scores in predominately Black areas in Wednesday's election. In Western Cape, DA officials say the Cape Town and provincial governments spend more on services for poorer areas than wealthy ones. Zwelivelile 'Mandla' Mandela - the grandson of Nelson Mandela and a traditional tribal leader - doesn't buy it. "As much as they can claim successes, those successes continue to be only for the few," he told Reuters. "The poorest of the poor are still living without any access to clean drinkable water, without any proper sewer systems."

Niall Reddy writes for Africa Is a Country that DA is the best of two evil options (10 June 2024).

We can’t predict precisely what an ANC-DA agreement—whether as coalition or “confidence and supply”—will entail. But it seems highly implausible that it will involve the repeal of any of the ANC’s big-ticket, redistributive items—the minimum wage, BEE or the NHI (on BIG both parties are nominally aligned). A move in that direction would be political suicide for Ramaphosa and for the centrist pact in turn. From a policy standpoint the most likely outcome from a DA-ANC agreement is straightforward continuity. That seems to be the explicit objective of both key DA leaders and their corporate backers.

He lists a couple of positives. For example, continuity might allow the country’s institutions to recover from Zuma years. In addition, the ANC may be more amenable to signing away powers of appointment (making them independent and thus beyond patronage politics, I assume) in their current weakened state. However, he says continuity in the long term would be bad.

In the medium and longer term, however, continuity is unequivocally bad. Many of the treatments being applied to stave off collapse will cause major complications down the line. Privatization might get the trains back and keep the lights on in the short run. In the long term it will hand infrastructural power to big business and sap the state’s capacity to imagine and enact structural transformation and climate adaptation. If the historical record shows anything, ongoing austerity will fail to fix the debt crisis while pushing people deeper into the arms of demagogues. Neoliberal policies are the root cause of the polarization in the country and they won’t be its solution. A DA pact might bring about a reversion to the pre-Zuma trend, but that trend was already one of crisis.

Does that mean a coalition with MKP and EFF would have been better? He says no. That would have brought economic catastrophe.

However, should RET forces regain control of the ANC—an outcome made more likely by a coalition with a kleptocrat party—we could very well get a far graver outcome, a return to the “amazing years” of Jacob Zuma, as his daughter put it. State capture redux. What will happen should that come to pass? Most immediately an economic collapse. It’s fair for the left to treat threats about “investor confidence” with some skepticism because business leaders tend to throw them around so idly when even minor issues are at stake. This is not one of those times. We are already in a low-intensity capital strike as investors wait to see if Ramaphosa’s reforms will gain traction. A full revival of the state capture agenda could push investment over the cliff edge.

He says MKP and EFF are antidemocratic, which would be worse than an ANC-DA alliance I deduce. There may be changes in the realm of foreign policy too since DA has diametrically opposite foreign policy stances from ANC.

An article from Bhaso Ndzendze, Associate Professor, International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, first published on The Conversation and republished on the Scroll, describes why foreign policy is important and speculates on the changes that coalition governments might bring (06 June 2024).

This is significant because over the past three decades, the international community has come to know where South Africa stands on major geopolitical questions. In particular, the country has been a key player in the realignment of global power, partly through its membership of the Brics grouping – Brazil, Russia India, China and South Africa. As of 1 January 2024, five new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) had joined Brics.

The ANC is pro-BRICS whereas DA is pro-West, pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel.

The two issues that are most likely to be a sticking point for the Democratic Alliance are the African National Congress government’s attitude towards Israel and its relationship with Russia. In its election manifesto, the Democratic Alliance lists seven priorities. All are domestic issues. Nevertheless, statements by its leaders and parliamentarians point to a party that is decidedly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. It’s moderate on Israel and sceptical of the Brics grouping. Following the 2023 Brics summit in South Africa in August 2023, Emma Louise Powell, the Democratic Party’s shadow foreign minister, criticised the grouping, calling it an “increasingly unholy alliance”, and the summit a waste of money. The party’s leader John Steenhuisen also visited Ukraine and expressed solidarity with Kiev. On the Israel/Palestine issue the party removed an MP from its shadow cabinet for expressing a pro-Palestine stance. And Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen refuses to call Israel’s conduct of its war on Gaza an act of genocide, saying: “One man’s genocide is another man’s freedom.”

I am guessing that if the government’s foreign policy actually changes, the US will be delighted.

As for the President himself? Keith Gottschalk, a political scientist from the University of the West Cape, writes for the Conversation that Ramaphosa may be the man to lead ANC (11 June 2024).

Ramaphosa’s vision as the country’s new president was of a new dawn, urging all to be willing to play a part to rebuild a capable state. But the sheer inertia of incompetent and corrupt Zuma-era appointees has meant that he has so far achieved little of this. The blame for his lack of effectiveness has been placed at Ramaphosa’s leadership style. He has been repeatedly criticised for prolonged over-consultation, and being too slow to take decisions. As a political scientist who has followed Ramaphosa’s path in government, I suggest that while he may be criticised for being too cautious, over-consulting, and taking too long to make decisions, these are precisely the qualities of temperament which are important in leading a government of national unity. And no one currently at the top of the ANC could take over from him and do better.

Be that as it may, for the time being, South Africa is stuck with the GNU and has no credible leftist movement. Perhaps because of that, analysts say that South Africa faces a greater danger than a GNU with DA or with EFF and MKP. A lack of voter participation.

Lose of Hope in Democracy

Remember that in an article from the ABC excerpted in last week’s edition, South African professor of law, Thuli Madonsela said that if government fails to bring about change in the people’s economic conditions, South Africans may lose faith in democracy? Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara writes for an article first published in Elitsha and republished in Amandzla that South Africa is already seeing authoritarian populism (13 June 2024).

Zuma’s populism mixes real material alienation with popular sentiment. In essence, Zuma represents an authoritarian populism which is smart enough to juxtapose ‘the people’ against the ‘elite’. In this, he has successfully distinguished himself from the political and economic establishment which Cyril Ramaphosa is comfortable in. This establishment is corrupt and self-serving. Zuma has consistently succeeded in portraying himself as a victim of the political, economic, cultural, and media establishment who he has depicted as united in vilifying him while also placing their own interests above the interests of ‘the people’. A woman interviewed by Newzroom Afrika complained that the proposed government of national unity (GNU) would be unfair because it would “exclude the MK Party we voted for from parliament”. Her conflation of the GNU with parliament demonstrates how Zuma’s populism deliberately mixes real material alienation from the political economy with popular sentiment. In a sense, this popular sentiment develops limited agency and coheres as a conscious rejection of the elites by giving popular consent to populist politicians while leaving the real power dynamic unaddressed. Zuma’s radical economic transformation is a ruse. Indeed, Zuma’s populism appeals primarily because there is a material reality of inequality, poverty and unemployment, which is a direct consequence of the ANC’s acquiescence to a neo-liberal order and capitalism in general. Ironically, Zuma was a central part of forces within the ANC that accepted and advanced this status quo. His latter-day positioning in favour of radical economic transformation is a ruse that does not explain how his government started severe austerity or the continued corporatisation and hollowing out of public enterprises, or the continued permission of capital flight.

It is not just Zuma that is using populism. Other parties are as well.

Populism has emboldened conservative forces. Populist politics is not confined to Zuma – the DA liberal establishment has also appealed to populism to build a public identity that separates itself from the ANC establishment. The same with that of the ethno-nationalism and xenophobia of the Patriotic Alliance (PA). Even the long-established petit-bourgeois Herman Mashaba has successfully brushed off his long-standing incorporation as a junior partner into the apartheid business elite and fired sustained shots at the ANC elite. In the case of the PA, ‘the people’ have been defined along ethnic-racial lines based on apartheid’s racial categories. For his part, Mashaba has whipped up popular anger against migrants. In other words, populism has enabled the emboldening and rise of these conservative forces and discourses.

Worse than the populist appeals and people being taken in by it are people completely leaving the democratic process. That is, choosing to not vote. Nathan Geffen writes for Groundup about the low turnout in South African elections (06 June 2024).

Estimating the population over 18 in South Africa isn’t easy. The 2022 census was poorly conducted. So I have used the Thembisa HIV model numbers; they are meticulously estimated. According to Thembisa, there are nearly 43-million South Africans over 18. Let’s be conservative and round that down to 42-million. About 16.3-million people voted, 59% of the 27.8-million registered voters, but less than 40% of the eligible voting population. This was the lowest percentage turnout to national elections since South Africa became democratic. You have to go back to 2004 to find a national election in which fewer people voted, but there were 13-million fewer adults then.

Whereas Geffen considers the troublesome electoral process the reason for the drop in voter participation, other analysts think that the reason may be more about there being no credible options. Zama Mthunzi wrote for Africa Is a Country about South Africa’s Crisis of Representation last year (28 April 2023).

Why is the growth of political parties not paralleled by growth in voter participation? Perhaps the dominant obsession with the state as the “only” way to resolve the problems facing South Africa is at play; or the need to build a strong civil society that fully participates in civic, community, and political affairs has been discarded. The slogan “The people shall govern” has been turned to “We need more leaders.” This has opened the window for the politics of “big man,” leadership, by mostly men, to save South Africa. Professor Michelle Williams of Wits University argues that a healthy democracy must have two things: administrative capacity and state legitimacy. With the collapse of national power utility Eskom and basic services, one can argue that there is no administrative capacity, and with the lower voter turnout, there is no state legitimacy. It is important to note that the major electoral victories of the African National Congress (ANC) were heavily underwritten by non-political party organizations. The strength of organizations such as the South African National Civics Organization, Congress of South African Trade Unions, the United Democratic Front, and many others drew South Africans to the polls to support the ANC. What we are seeing now is the opposite, the drowning of civil society in a pool of political parties. As these parties gear up for next year’s elections, the crisis of political representation deepens. It is more than clear that the ANC has lost its leadership role. The discussion in the public sphere is that South Africa must prepare for coalition governments. Whether such shifts in power and representation can bring South Africa out of what now borders on embarrassment in the continent and the world remains to be seen.

Less than forty percent of the eligible voters turned up this election. That does seem like people have checked out, haven’t they? Luke Sinwell, professor at the University of Johannesburg, writes for Roape that the left needs to provide a credible alternative to people (06 June 2024).

But, we don’t know what the people are thinking, for example, including those who did not vote at a moment when the percentage of voter turnout is the lowest it has ever been during our 30 years of democracy. We need to go back to the drawing board. We need to sit and listen to the people before propping up the next workers’ party or socialist electoral front which will, if history is anything to go by, in all likelihood have a very thin support base. This week’s commentary by politicians, analysts and journalists mirrors this appraisal. But the assumption that because people voted, their voices have been heard is shortsighted and dangerous terrain for those who seek fundamental change. We require a deeper, more robust democracy, not one where people vote every 5 years and then sit back in the hope that the new configuration of power within parliament will hand down some crumbs to make our lives slightly better. What is clear is that the rules, norms and boundaries in which decisions are made at the ballot box, at public meetings and in the streets must be reimagined on the terms of the people themselves. Without this, elected officials will continue to break attractive promises. They will speak the language of the people as a means to pacify and control, thus denying present and future generations in South Africa our economic and political freedom.

I do hope that South African civil society manages to create a credible left democratic alternative because right now the future looks bleak.

That is it for today everyone. Until next Wednesday.

May we the people never loss faith in democracy even if one day nation states disappear.

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