South African voters have delivered a stinging rebuke to the ruling African National Congress – the party of Nelson Mandela that has run the country since its first real democratic elections in 1994.
In municipal and district elections, the ANC’s share of the vote fell to 54 per cent, and lost control of the national capital, Pretoria, the business hub of Johannesburg and its symbolic stronghold of Nelson Mandela Bay.
It is another battering for the reputation of Jacob Zuma, the beleaguered president, who has overseen a slide towards recession, all the while mired in a series of overlapping corruption scandals that have highlighted the economic and social inequality in post-Apartheid South Africa. His party has lost ground on the left to the Economic Freedom Fighters, led by the ANC’s former youth leader, Julius Malema; on the right, the Democratic Alliance, which was once seen as a “white” party, has gained ground under its young – and black – leader, Mmusi Maimane.
South Africa’s economy has been locked in a sustained slump, caused in part by falling prices for its commodity exports and slowdowns in its key trading partners in Asia and Europe. However, many of its wounds are self-inflicted. Chronic underinvestment in power and water services have led to brown-outs and shortages that have crippled smaller businesses and undermined the country’s standing as the most sophisticated economy on the continent.
The high cost of living, excessive debt, unemployment and poverty are key underlying factors of seemingly disparate protest action and social mobilisation.
That in turn has hit foreign investment, which South Africa needs to plug the holes in its trade balance and public finances. With resources dwindling, it has had to seek cutbacks, which have fallen on people who already feel disenfranchised.
In October 2015, protests shut down universities across the country, as students raged against a 10.5 per cent increase in fees.
“The anger and frustration in society is directed at the President Zuma, it is directed at his inner circle and it also directed at wider ANC structures. However, this is not the sole cause of societal anger. It is also fuelled by deep economic inequalities and structural imbalances which remain 22 years after democracy,” says Cherrel Africa, associate professor in political studies at the University of the Western Cape.
“The high cost of living, excessive debt, unemployment and poverty are key underlying factors of seemingly disparate protest action and social mobilisation. This is why there are widespread protests in the DA-run province of the Western Cape as well. All social actors will need to come to the realisation that inequality must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
Legitimacy crisis
The ANC has delivered a lot in 22 years of power, not least freedom and democracy from the previous brutal regime, but unlike many other post-colonial parties of independence it owes much of its continued status to its ‘tripartite alliance’ with the Communist Party and the powerful trade unions. This means that the party derives much of its legitimacy from promising economic equality and social mobility – redressing the imbalances created over decades of racial segregation and offering everyone a chance at a prosperous life.
Unless significant changes occur in the ANC it will be a major challenge for the party to regain its legitimacy
The challenges for young, poor people stand in stark contrast with the lives of South Africa’s new, black elite, who are often accused of having simply inherited the governance structures of the racist Apartheid government. Zuma’s cosy relationship with a powerful industrial family, the Guptas, and his government’s links the class of “tenderpreneurs” – individuals who have got rich off the back of lucrative public contracts – only highlight the growing gulf in opportunity in the country.
“Unless significant changes occur in the ANC it will be a major challenge for the party to regain its legitimacy,” Africa says. “There is little recourse for ordinary people to effect leadership change as this falls within the domain of the party’s internal structures and processes.”
Some figures within the ANC, including the deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, a trade union activist-turned businessman, have said that the party will listen to the electorate, but Africa says that “South Africans are not seeing congruence between what is being said and what is being done.”
Several analysts, including those at the rating agency Fitch, believe that the ANC might now throw money at the problem, funding social projects and hiking public wages – measures that it cannot afford. The country’s is heading for a recession, and its bonds may well be downgraded to ‘junk’ status in December, further increasing its costs of borrowing, and giving it less financial firepower.
“There is indeed a higher risk that the government will propose new radical and populist policies to boost its support ahead of the 2019 elections,” say Robert Besseling, executive director of risk consultancy Exx Africa. “Over the next three years, the ANC is more likely to shift to the left to counter-act the EFF’s sudden emergence rather than right to curb the DA’s steady growth.
“Costly spending programmes would breach expenditure ceilings and would be frowned on by ratings agencies ahead of their review in December. Moreover, redistributive proposals in the farming, banking, or mining sectors would also trigger further capital flight.”
Photo by ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images
