South Africa’s 2016 election result: Zuma must go

The 2016 municipal elections have been something of a tonic for a country that has been submerged in bad news about its democracy for some years now. There were doubts about the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), fears of violence, and anxiety over the results. But South Africa rediscovered last week that it is still in a position envied by much of the world: able to hold efficient, peaceful, free and fair elections, with all parties accepting the results and the governing party conceding defeat where it loses. Turnout was 58%. Casting a ballot seldom took any voter more than 16 minutes. The full, vetted results from 22 600 voting stations, more than ever before, were delivered within days. It was a shot in the arm for a democracy that has serious challenges.

Many people viewed this election as a referendum on President Jacob Zuma and the African National Congress (ANC). And the verdict was devastating. Even Jacob Zuma’s somewhat chastened president’s election address to the country was marred by a women’s protest holding up placards with ‘Remember Khwezi’ – the woman Zuma was acquitted of raping 10 years ago – for all the world’s media to see. On the upside, it is hard to imagine such a protest happening anywhere else on the continent without serious consequences for the demonstrators. But ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe was quoted as simply saying: “That is how free SA is – people have a right to protest even when the president is speaking.”  The ANC Women’s League however want the matter investigated and suspect the IEC of a conspiracy to humiliate their patriarch.

Zuma sinking ANC into a hole

Some time ago, I wrote about Zuma digging the ANC a hole so deep it might not be able to climb out, and this indeed seem to be the way things are developing. Municipal control in the very seat of government, Tshwane, was wrested from the ANC by the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). The ANC lost the capital through sheer arrogance and a failure to listen to its previously faithful party voters. This pattern was repeated all over the country. Nationally, the ANC’s support dropped from 62% to 54%. It is hard to believe, just ten years ago, the ANC was approaching a two-thirds majority.

The ANC has gone from an outright majority in 180 of the country’s 213 municipalities to having control now of 161 councils. There are also 27 hung councils. Coalitions – many of which will almost certainly see the ANC left out in the cold – are in negotiation as this article is going to publication.

ANC breakaway party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) stand to be the chief kingmakers, holding the balance of power. Its leader Julius Malema will have to maximise this. The EFF focused its limited resources on Polokwane in Limpopo and managed to get 28%, slashing the ANC’s support from 79% to 57%. Yet embarrassingly, although it grew its support significantly off a small base (8% in the municipal elections from 6% in the national elections), it failed to win a single local council this election, which creates an ironic contrast with its extremely loud-mouthed participation in the national assembly.

The DA improved its support in its stronghold of the Western Cape to 63% and has a two-thirds majority in the country’s legislative capital of Cape Town. Meanwhile in the black Cape Town township of Gugulethu for instance, where the ANC previously had almost 95% of the vote, the ANC dropped to below 80%. Young, black, urban voters in poor areas are shifting their allegiance or not voting at all.

The ANC was dealt its bloodiest blow in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, where it lost control of its heartland, going from a two-thirds majority, when Zuma became president, to now just 41%. The DA’s Athol Trollip, a middle-aged, pale male and ex-farmer led his party to gain 47% of the vote. That this can happen means, in parts of the country at least, electorally we live in a very different South Africa from a decade ago.

While the ANC’s brand is tied to Zuma and diminishing, the DA brand, since Mmusi Maimane took the helm, is far stronger than its leader. That is a good position for a political party to be in. It is worth noting that no significant white or coloured support was lost to the DA under black leadership.

But Maimane’s mission was to deliver the country’s economic powerhouse, Gauteng, wresting black middle class voters and aspirant young urbanites from the ANC. It is too soon to tell how many in this demographic he delivered, but in the City of Johannesburg the ANC was neck and neck with the DA for much of the vote counting and went from having a comfortable majority in the previous election to having under 45%. That is more than a wakeup call. Fearing what lay ahead, the Gauteng ANC leadership in the run up to the elections did what it could to distance itself from Zuma. They are likely to pay the price now for admitting the beam in the eye of the party.

President Jacob Zuma casts his vote at Ntolwane Primary School in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal. (Photograph courtesy of GovernmentZA/Flickr)

Zuma must go

Part of the problem is the ANC’s increasing reliance on race rhetoric. Playing the race card has now almost completely alienated it from white voters and also many coloured voters. By vilifying Maimane as a stooge for whites, the party also humiliates many black people who identify with him – his contradictions and all – those “clever blacks” Zuma likes to deride. And the ANC can hardly claim to be an expression of blackness as an alternative. Looking back to the liberation struggle and inspiring racial antagonism are strategies that can work in the short term, but in the long term spell doom for more than just the ANC.

Whereas the urbane Maimane was meant to deliver urban black votes to the DA, the conservative, traditional, rural appeal of Zuma was meant to make up for the ANC losses nationally in rural areas and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) – his trump card in the party’s politics and perhaps the only thing he has to offer since the inception of his presidency.

Indeed, the ANC added to its support well over half a million votes in KZN (up from 2011), but the DA also increased by close to 320 000 votes and the IFP by just over 300 000 votes in the province. Overall, it was a gain for the ANC in the number of KZN councils controlled and seats won, but this election it was certainly not enough to make up for the party’s decline across the country.

The fact is that in an election with many more registered voters than in 2011, the ANC lost 446 000 votes overall, whereas the DA gained 1,6 million votes. Zuma also faces the humiliation of the ANC prematurely celebrating victory and then having to concede electoral defeat to the IFP in his hometown municipality.

The worst thing the ANC could do now to itself is to indulge in such complacencies as that it still has 54% of the vote and controls 75% of all municipalities, or to rationalise away its losses with feeble excuses, such as opposition voters were more motivated and turned out in their droves, the EFF played to populism, the bad weather in the Eastern Cape meant poor voters stayed at home, or that the youth are apathetic and lack a political education.

Why did ANC voters not show up to the polls? Because of Zuma, his patronage system and the party’s grotesque mismanagement of its internal election process in many areas, Tshwane being a prime example. Why did the EFF take away so many votes? Because it based its campaign on getting rid of Zuma.  Why does the EFF even exist at all? Answer: Zuma. Why are young, poor black voters not voting or even registering? Because they see no political home in an ANC under Zuma. The same goes for emancipated women, with the exception of the ANC Women’s League, and increasingly among the black middle class.

South Africans can be proud of having pulled off a successful election and should be proud of ANC voters who showed that their vote is not to be taken for granted by the ANC any longer. The message is clear: Zuma must go, “ngoku” as they told Mbeki in Polokwane – now! But it seems, nobody in that party can do it.