South Africa is still tabulating the votes from its national elections, but it appears at press time that the African National Congress (ANC) will lose its majority for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Preliminary results compiled on Thursday showed the ANC slipping well under 50 percent, and possibly closer to 40 percent, although it will still come in well ahead of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). Third place will probably go to the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), followed closely by former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party.
The final count may require several days to tabulate. Under South African law, the election commission has a maximum of seven days to declare the results.
The ANC’s previous low point was a 57.5 percent showing in the 2019 election, so a plunge into the low 40s would be a precipitous drop. ANC leaders appear stunned by their tumble in the polls, as they were confidently predicting they would retain their majority when voting began on Wednesday.
“I have no doubt whatsoever in my heart of hearts that the people will invest their confidence in the African National Congress,” incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa said after casting his own ballot in Soweto on Wednesday.
ANC deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane significantly revised those expectations on Thursday, claiming that “everybody” thought her party would limp to the finish line with “around 36% to 40%,” so its projected 42 percent finish actually beat expectations.
The nightmare scenario for many observers is that a weakened ANC will be obliged to make a deal with the radical EFF and its virulently racist leader Julius Malema to form a governing coalition. The EFF is on track to finish with about eight percent of the vote, enough to get the ANC over the 50 percent mark and overpower the expected 25 percent showing for the Democratic Alliance.
Reuters on Thursday described Malema as a “kingmaker” in the tumultuous 2024 election landscape, and possibly even a candidate for deputy president – a scenario that “strikes fear into investors and the white upper middle class he rails against.”
Malema is a former member of the ANC who broke away to form a more radical left-wing party. Among its other brainstorms, the EFF has proposed nationalizing South Africa’s gold and platinum mines, seizing land from its white farmers, conjuring jobs out of thin air and sending weapons to the Hamas terrorists of Gaza.
“We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people – at least for now,” Malema said a few years ago, when asked if South Africa’s whites might object to their property being stolen by his followers. Last year he was reprimanded for leading his EFF faithful in a song called “Kill the Boer,” but on Wednesday South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that singing about killing Boers does not constitute “hate speech.”
Zuma and his MK party, dismissed by some observers as a sideshow because Zuma has been jailed for corruption and was not cleared to run in the election until last month, ended up doing almost as well as the EFF – and maybe even a little better, as MK was slightly ahead in the counts as of Thursday afternoon.
MK did especially well in Zuma’s homeland of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) – well enough to where the ANC might not be the biggest party in the province when the dust settles. MK also drew many young voters who felt the older parties were out of ideas and the EFF was too radical.
Zuma’s daughter Dudzile Zuma-Sambudla said on Thursday that MK will not form a coalition with the ANC, although working with the EFF and other “progressive black parties” was a “possibility.”
MK has no shortages of choices for alliance partners, as over 50 parties fielded candidates in the election, greatly diluting the opposition vote. The election became a confusing jamboree of small parties because so many politicians sensed the ANC would be tumbling from its 30-year throne and they were eager to get a piece of the action.
This greatly frustrated the DA, a center-right party that might have rivaled the ANC’s share of the vote in a less crowded and chaotic field. The DA appears to have drawn a hefty share of white voters, who comprise about 20 percent of South Africa’s population, but fared poorly with Zulu-speaking South Africans, and ran afoul of some local parties that grabbed a hefty share of the anti-ANC vote.
Preliminary estimates showed the DA and EFF pulling almost the same share of the vote they received in 2019, suggesting all of the ANC’s losses were gobbled up by small parties and boutique candidates. This also gives the ANC a smorgasbord of parties it can tap for a ruling coalition without bringing Malenga or Zuma into the fold.
Many South African voters were dismayed with the ANC, but did not trust any of the alternatives. Over a third of registered voters told Ipsos pollsters on the eve of the election that “no political party fully aligns with their views and opinions.” All of the major parties are distrusted by more voters than trust them, with the ANC retaining the smallest “trust gap” of the bunch, despite widespread public pessimism about the state of the country under ANC rule.
The South African election was closely watched in Israel, as the ANC government under Ramaphosa has filed charges of genocide against Israel over the war in Gaza.
The Times of Israel (TOI) was somewhat disappointed to see the ANC might cling to power despite its inability to “consistently supply basic services like water and electricity” and the “widespread” allegations of corruption against it.
“The best-case scenario for Israel would be that the ANC drops below 50%, and the Democratic Alliance succeeds in cobbling together a coalition of smaller parties that would include the IFP and Christian parties. That outcome is somewhat unrealistic, however. A more likely positive outcome for Israel is that the ANC has to build a coalition with more moderate parties that blunt some of its most aggressive moves against Israel,” sighed TOI.
The IFP, or Inkatha Freedom Party, is a right-leaning Zulu party that did not join the ANC in condemning Israel. The IFP had about 2.5 percent of the vote as of Thursday afternoon. Its leaders are severely critical of the ANC, and dream of putting together a coalition that might govern without it.
“The ANC has destroyed our country. If you want to rebuild South Africa, it could be a hard thing to bring along a person who destroyed the country and whom people voted out. We will explore other opportunities,” IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa sniffed last week.
TOI saw few realistic outcomes in which Israel’s relationship with South Africa might dramatically improve, although it hoped for a modest consolation prize: the potential ouster of Foreign Minister Nalendi Pandor, “one of the most anti-Israel senior ANC figures.”
Pandor recently called Israel and the United States a new “axis of evil” for conspiring in alleged Palestinian genocide, and she has threatened to jail any South African who fights for Israel against the terrorists of Hamas.
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