From our Monday Briefing 13 May 2019...

Election Result: The big picture and the prognosis going forward

Last week’s elections marked the end of a period of rapidly shifting political dynamics in South Africa stretching over 2009-2014-2019 during which the political landscape was changed irreversibly and signalled the start of a new political era in which a number of new dynamics will come into play. The election result did not produce any broad, major shifts in the South African political landscape. Parties, with a few exceptions, generally more or less maintained their previous positions. The ANC still governs; the DA is still the opposition; the EFF lies third; and the rest bring up the rear. But this apparent maintaining of more or less the status quo, can easily cause one to overlook some important shifts in the bigger picture. What shifts there have been, are sharply and significantly pronounced and may significantly alter the party-political power relationship and set the tone and direction for the longer term. We look at some of these in the bigger picture:

Combined centre losing ground

SA’s moderate political middle ground is under some threat and was the biggest loser of any impact. This refers to the ANC and DA collectively. What these two parties shed in support, migrated to extreme ends of the spectrum as represented by the EFF on the left and the FF Plus on the right. This signals a number of things: greater polarisation, racial-nationalist/group trends and radicalisation (the latter in the context of what is currently considered moderate centrist politics in SA).

Significant left and right shift

The significance of this shift lies in the fact that, while both the EFF and the FF Plus represent relatively small segments of the total electorate, both parties grew their support sharply and significantly since 2014 – the EFF almost doubled its support from just over 6% to almost 11% (8.3% in 2016), while the FF Plus almost trebled its support from 0.9% to 2.38% (0.8% in 2016). Within a party proportional representation system that signifies a significant shift. It signals that a significant proportion of largely younger black South Africans are dissatisfied with the ANC failing to provide greater black economic inclusion over 25 years and have opted for the more radical, black-centred content promised by the EFF.

It also signals that disenchanted whites, feeling increasingly marginalised by what is perceived as a black/radical attack on them which the DA has failed to address, have moved to the FF Plus on the right in the hope that white minority interests will be better represented there. This is bad news for a young democracy that started its democratic journey in 1994 on the promise of non-racialism, reconciliation and national unity. The ANC and DA have some serious lessons to learn.

Maturing democracy

And yet this is not all bad news: it also represents a maturing of SA’s democracy and its electoral dynamics within a proportional representation system where more influence and representation is flowing to smaller parties, thus spreading representation across a more equitable basis where more political parties will represent a more diverse political community of interests and voices across a broader spectrum of influence and representation. It may mean the days of the ‘broad-church’ dominance of the two largest parties, but especially of the ANC, are over. In a country as racially, ethnically, economically and socially diverse as SA, this could be a good thing and may in future help lessen and defuse rising socio-economic and political pressures.

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