13 May 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
The top three parties to
emerge from last week’s election — the ANC, DA and EFF — can, with justification,
each award themselves an ‘A’, writes Tony Leon
THE brilliant conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Benjamin
Zander — author of The Art of Possibility — uses a novel teaching practice. He
tells all of his students on the first day of class: "Go ahead, give
yourself an ‘A’."
Here at home, the top three parties to emerge from last week’s election
can, with justification, each award themselves an "A".
Start with the winner, the African National Congress (ANC). In this
column last week, I pointed out that it had never headed into an election since
1994 with so many negatives against it, from the broken unity of the alliance,
the clouds of corruption, community dissatisfaction engulfing its
administration and the stumbles of its president, Jacob Zuma. Despite these
hurdles, it swept the boards by a distance of 40 percentage points from its
rising challenger, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Despite its slippage in five provinces, most notably in Gauteng, it
ended where it began — in control of eight of them. Although its voter share is
fractionally lower than it was in 1994, the combined opposition total vote has
barely budged in 20 years, even though the forces of opposition have
dramatically rearranged themselves since then. And here’s the thing: 20 years
ago, when the opposition parties obtained 38% of the vote, it could be said
that those votes were objectively against the ANC. But now the 6.5% total
contributed to this column by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is far more
ambiguous. It offers a version, more populist and radical certainly, of the ANC
itself. The same could not be said of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which,
with 10% voter share in 1994 was not simply an opponent of the ANC, but in
ideological terms, from support for free enterprise to championing federalism,
was its complete opposite.
This election has also strengthened Zuma. Once again, he has defied the
political death spiral confidently expected by pundits, who opined that a
below-60% vote would imperil him. In fact, as an ANC insider pointed out to me,
even before the results were in, Zuma is incontestably in control of his party.
On his national executive committee, populated with ministers, deputies and
directors-generals, about 90% of its members owe their offices to his
patronage.
In second place, the DA also gets an "A", and possibly in view
of its increased voter share, even an "A-plus". While Ipsos and the
Sunday Times did our democracy a great favour by publishing such precise
pre-election polls, the missing factor in our analysis here is the absence of
exit polls. So it remains speculative as to precisely where the DA additions
came from. Were they disaffected Congress of the People (COPE) voters, or the
newly registered, or ANC crossovers, or a combination? But the remarkable fact
of the DA advance is that it happened in the face of huge demographic shrinkage
of its core white base. Simply to have maintained its previous voter share,
given white flight and mortality, would have been an achievement. But to grow
beyond that meant breaking into new demographic markets, which it certainly
did.
But the shock weekend announcement by DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe
Mazibuko that, just as her caucus added 22 new members, she was leaving her
post, has taken some shine off its electoral achievement. And in leadership
terms, the ANC and DA now have opposite challenges.
Zuma has plenty of external negatives in the country and among investors
abroad to rebut. The DA, on the other hand, is externally enhanced but
internally divided with a hole in its key parliamentary slot. Since I left the
party and parliamentary leadership in 2007, I have held the view that having
two centres of power, one in Parliament and one outside, was problematic.
Objectively, as she did on the weekend, DA leader Helen Zille can take full
credit for the party’s vote having doubled under her. Equally, in the same
period, the third parliamentary leader has just quit her post, suggesting a
very high turnover in seven years that can be remedied only when the national
and parliamentary leadership roles are fused again into one.
The EFF can also give itself, at least, an "A". Its debut
result impresses, but its future is less assured than the big two. Most of the
party’s support depends on its charismatic leader, Julius Malema. But both the
criminal justice system and the South African Revenue Service are liable to be
less forgiving of him than of his arch nemesis, Zuma. And one thing about
parliamentary opposition work compared with campaigning can be gleaned, with
adaptation, from a famous phrase: "You campaign in poetry, you legislate
in prose."
Whether EFF MPs will affect this process is open to question. The past
two decades of our Parliament have been extremely unforgiving of the third
party finishers: just witness the vertiginous decline of both the IFP and COPE.
Interesting days lie ahead for the winners and the 90% of voters who backed
them.
No comments:
Post a Comment