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A fragmented opposition

While the ANC is rapidly losing its grip on power, there’s a potential complicating factor standing in the way of coalitions becoming the new normal. As the ANC has so powerfully demonstrated, it is certainly possible for one party to attain a dominant position in our political system if a large majority of voters prefer this. Once support for the ANC drops below 50 per cent, won’t another party simply take its place as a hegemonic force that controls the national government and more than half of all municipalities and provinces? The short answer is no. The ANC’s electoral decline is unlikely to benefit any single opposition party to the extent that it will become a dominant electoral force. The key consideration in this regard is whether the voters who are abandoning the ANC are likely to vote for one other party, or whether multiple opposition parties stand to benefit from the ANC’s decline.

A long walk to power

Let’s start by looking at the potential for South Africa’s official opposition, the DA, to replace the ANC as the dominant force in South African politics. In contrast to the ANC, the DA has traditionally done best in municipal rather than national elections. In particular, the party has grown consistently in metropolitan municipalities since 2006. It now dominates politics in Cape Town, and governs Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane, and Johannesburg as the senior partner in formal coalition and minority governments. Figure 6 displays the DA’s electoral performance in metro elections from 2000 to 2016, and projects this up to 2021.

Source: Electoral Commission of South Africa.

The results are highly significant. In the first place, the DA looks set to maintain its majority in Cape Town well into the future. It is also trending upwards in all seven other metros. However, it is only in Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane (and perhaps eventually Johannesburg) where it has a realistic chance of achieving an outright majority (more than 50 per cent of all votes) within the next decade. It is unlikely to capture Buffalo City (East London and Bisho), eThekwini (Durban), Mangaung (Bloemfontein) and Ekurhuleni (East Rand) on its own any time soon.

With at least half of the country’s eight biggest cities still out of the DA’s reach, what about other municipalities and provincial governments? The Western Cape is an interesting case, providing the single strongest argument in support of the idea that the DA may soon take over more of the country’s provinces and municipalities, both urban and rural. Remarkably, the DA’s current dominance in the Western Cape is akin to the ANC’s overwhelming support in most parts of the country during the early 2000s, when it was just about the only game in town. In the Western Cape, the DA has now become the only game in town.

But this wasn’t always the case. As recently as 2006, the DA had majorities in only two Western Cape municipalities. The ANC controlled three outright, and had more support than the DA in 17 more. But 2006 was also the year in which the DA was able to cobble together a seven-party coalition which took control of Cape Town, the province’s political crown jewel (Chapter Nine returns to the remarkable story of the 2006 Cape Town coalition).

The multiparty alliance elected the DA’s Helen Zille as mayor of Cape Town. Between 2006 and 2011, her administration managed to turn the failing municipality around in financial and administrative terms. By the time the 2011 local elections came around, the National Treasury and external credit ratings agencies were regularly rating Cape Town as the best-run metro in the country, and the city consistently achieved unqualified audit opinions, attesting to its sound financial management.1

Cape Town’s success provided a political springboard for the DA to expand into the rest of the Western Cape, and Zille’s party masterfully took advantage of the opportunity. During the 2009 provincial elections, the DA built its campaign around its growing track record of clean governance in Cape Town. The strategy paid off, and the party wrested control of the provincial government from the ANC.

In the 2011 municipal polls, the party kicked its campaigning up another notch by adopting the slogan ‘We Deliver For All’. It again vigorously canvassed voters in the Western Cape on the basis that it was no longer just an opposition party; instead, the Cape Town experience had turned it into a party of government, and one that governed well. The message stuck. Building on its 2009 provincial victory, the DA completely flipped the script in the province’s 30 municipalities, winning 12 outright, while the ANC did not gain a majority in a single municipality. The rout continued in 2016, when the DA won 17 municipalities outright. The ANC again failed to get a single outright majority.

The Western Cape experience shows that, at the municipal and provincial levels at least, voters who abandon the ANC may indeed vote en masse for a single opposition party. After 2006, Western Cape voters who were dissatisfied with ANC maladministration did not split evenly into different groups supporting the ACDP (which held the position of deputy mayor in Cape Town), the FF+, COPE, the UDM, the Africa Muslim Party, the Universal Party, and the DA, even though these parties were all part of the Cape Town coalition. Instead, the DA was able to take control of the Cape Town narrative and convince voters that it was the real reason for the city’s turnaround. Its glossy 2011 election manifesto was even entitled The Cape Town Story.2 As a result, a large majority of voters rewarded the DA, but none of its six original coalition partners.

In essence, the DA’s strategy in the Western Cape was first to wrest control of the metro away from the ANC through a coalition; turn Cape Town into a well-run municipality; take credit for the improvement; and then carry that message into the province’s rural hinterland. Tracking the party’s growth between 2006 and 2016 shows a striking pattern: the DA first took over areas closer to Cape Town, while its influence weakened further from the metro. By 2016, this incremental process meant that almost every municipality within about 450 kilometres of Cape Town was under DA control. Beyond 450 kilometres, the ANC remained in charge (although its majorities were shrinking).

The spread of DA power from the metropolis to the surrounding rural areas probably had a lot to do with information flows. People who lived closer to the city visited Cape Town more regularly, and knew more people who lived there. These visitors took the DA’s story of progress back to their own communities. But it naturally took longer for the DA’s Cape Town message to reach those people who lived further away, knew fewer people in the city, and visited less regularly. The message was widely spread in municipalities close to the city, but thinned out further from Cape Town.

From a national perspective, this paints a promising picture for the DA. Just as in Cape Town in 2006, the party took over mayoral positions in Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane, and Johannesburg after the 2016 elections by cobbling together multiparty working arrangements. In the hopes of replicating its Western Cape experience, the first step would be for the DA to clean up the administration of these three metros – no small task after decades of ANC misrule.3

If it does succeed in turning these metros around, the party could build its 2019 provincial and 2021 municipal campaigns around these success stories. Based on the Western Cape template, the DA’s aim would be to take over dozens of municipalities and eventually win provincial office in Gauteng, the Northern Cape, and possibly the Eastern Cape. It is probably the best strategy the DA could follow, and it will be fascinating to watch this dynamic unfold.

However, it is doubtful whether the party will be able to replicate the Western Cape pattern in most other parts of the country. Western Cape politics have always differed from those in the rest of the country. In 1994, the NP won the Western Cape even as the rest of the country (except for KwaZulu-Natal) supported the ANC. Although the ANC eventually merged with a faction of the NP to gain control of the province, it was never as popular there as it was in most parts of the country. The Western Cape was never fully under the ANC’s spell.

The reasons for this have to do with economics and demographics. Even before the DA took over, the Western Cape was the second wealthiest province in South Africa (after Gauteng) in terms of GDP per capita, and had the lowest unemployment rate of all nine provinces.4 The province has excellent transport and communication infrastructure, and features the highest literacy and school completion rates in the country.5 Overall, then, residents of the Western Cape are wealthier, more educated, and have access to better infrastructure than most other South Africans.

The province’s demographics are also different from most of the country (although some parts of the Eastern and Northern Cape have similar demographic profiles). It is the only province where black people are not a demographic majority. Coloured people constitute nearly half of the population, while the province is also home to a higher proportion of white South Africans relative to other regions. Afrikaans is the primary language for half of the Western Cape’s population, as opposed to only 13.5 per cent of the national population.6

The profile of DA supporters largely reflects the economic and demographic composition of its Western Cape support base. The latest available public opinion poll on the profiles of political party support was conducted by Ipsos in late 2013. While those results are outdated, they provide some interesting insights. The results show that, on average, DA voters were better educated and wealthier than ANC (or EFF) voters. About half of DA voters were white, 27 per cent coloured, and 20 per cent black.7 Afrikaans-speakers made up about half of all DA supporters, and English-speakers about 32 per cent.8

While it is thus safe to say that the party’s message has resonated with wealthier minority voters to a far greater extent than those of any other party – it has indeed turned the DA into the most ethnically diverse political party in South African history – the big question is whether the DA’s strategy of using the Nelson Mandela Bay/Tshwane/Johannesburg story to win over voters in the rural Eastern Cape as well as in the rural areas of Limpopo, North West, the Free State and Mpumalanga which surround metropolitan Gauteng, could succeed. This strategy worked well in the relatively wealthy, mostly Afrikaans- and English-speaking minority communities of the Western Cape. But it is still unclear whether it will work in regions where most voters are black, don’t speak Afrikaans or English, and are much poorer.

Nevertheless, the 2016 elections showed that the DA has a much higher electoral ceiling than most people thought possible a decade previously. If it can govern the big cities successfully during the next few years, it may soon be in outright control of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane, and Johannesburg. Given the ANC’s implosion in the metros, the DA could soon also be the senior partner in a coalition government in Ekurhuleni (which would give the party control over all of Gauteng’s major municipalities), while trending upwards in Buffalo City, eThekwini and Mangaung. Rural regions most likely to swing eventually to the DA are located in the western parts of the Northern and Eastern Cape, home to some minority groups that still support the ANC. Proof of this is the fact that the DA has also grown significantly in many smaller regional centres such as Kimberley, Springbok, and Cradock.

The best-case scenario for the DA during the next decade is to retain its majorities in Cape Town and the Western Cape, win control of Gauteng’s municipalities as well as its provincial government, win Nelson Mandela Bay outright, and win provincial elections in the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape. If this does materialise, it would constitute a political achievement that was unthinkable even two elections ago. But even then, DA majorities in much of the central and eastern parts of the country – including Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, North West, and the Free State – would remain highly unlikely.

While the DA’s best-case scenario is not impossible, economic and demographic realities mean that its future gains in Gauteng as well as in the Northern and Eastern Cape will probably result from its participation in coalitions. A more realistic future for the DA is probably one in which the party remains dominant in the Western Cape, and heads coalition governments (at the municipal and provincial levels) in Gauteng, the Northern Cape, and parts of the Eastern Cape. Despite the DA’s impressive recent gains, it remains highly unlikely that it will gain outright control of more than half of South Africa’s municipalities and provinces within the next decade. In turn, this means the party is unlikely to get more than 50 per cent of the national vote in the near future.

Rise of the spoilers

A compounding challenge facing the DA’s attempts to gain majority support among poorer black communities in the central and eastern parts of the country is the emergence of the EFF as a spoiler or kingmaker in some significant municipalities. Although the EFF gained only 8.24 per cent of the national vote in the 2016 municipal elections, and did not win a majority in even one municipality, it probably played a decisive role in dragging the ANC below 50 per cent and preventing the DA from gaining outright majorities in some key places.

For example, in Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA ended up with 46.66 per cent, the ANC with 41.50 per cent, and the EFF with 5.03 per cent. In Tshwane, the DA got 43.10 per cent, the ANC 41.48 per cent, and the EFF 11.64 per cent. In both of these cases, it is easy to see how the EFF played an important role in keeping both the ANC and DA below the 50 per cent threshold. Aside from its impact on the metro results, the EFF also made significant gains in parts of the North West and Limpopo.

In Rustenburg, it dragged down the ANC’s share of the vote from 73.82 per cent in 2011 to a mere 48.27 per cent in 2016, and the DA’s from 20.29 per cent to 15.90 per cent, while the EFF itself won 26.44 per cent of the vote during its first election in Rustenburg. It had a similar impact in Polokwane – Julius Malema’s home town – where the ANC’s share of the vote dropped precipitously from 80.24 per cent to 57.20 per cent, and the DA’s from 11.43 per cent to 10.91 per cent, with the EFF taking 28.33 per cent.

But despite its relatively rapid rise in some isolated regions as well as its high national Parliamentary and media profile, 91 out of every 100 South Africans have never voted for the EFF, and the party has never attempted to govern even one municipality, let alone a province. In terms of hard numbers, and in the bigger scheme of the country’s politics, the EFF remains a fringe player that has a long way to go to gain anything approaching a dominant position at any level of government.

The final opposition parties to consider are the IFP and its breakaway, the National Freedom Party (NFP). It may be difficult to recall today, but during the 1990s, the IFP posed one of the greatest potential threats to ANC hegemony. The party dominated local and provincial politics in KwaZulu-Natal, and as a Zulu ethnic-based formation, it theoretically had the potential to cause a split within the ANC along ethnic lines. At more than 20 per cent of the population, Zulus constitute the single largest ethnic bloc in South Africa. If the IFP had managed to unite all Zulu voters under its flag, it could have seriously damaged the ANC’s standing as a dominant force among black voters.

That did not happen. Instead, the ANC slowly ate into the IFP’s support in KwaZulu-Natal, eventually winning outright control of the province in 2009. The IFP was further weakened when, in 2011, a faction of its leaders defected to form the ANC-aligned NFP. The newly formed party garnered more than 10 per cent of the votes in KwaZulu-Natal in the 2011 election, reducing the once provincially mighty IFP to only 15 per cent support in the province. The split in the IFP, coupled with its precipitous decline over the past two decades and its inability to break out of its ethnic enclave, means that both the IFP and the NFP have no chance of becoming a nationally dominant electoral force.

Figure 7 summarises the current state of play among opposition parties. With 27.02 per cent of the vote in 2016, the DA is clearly the best placed to challenge the ANC. But while the DA’s recent growth has been impressive, it would need to almost double its current share of the vote to gain an outright national majority. The voting shares of all other opposition parties remain below 10 per cent, which means they have no realistic chance of becoming a dominant force in South African politics in the near future.

Source: Electoral Commission of South Africa.

What about a party that doesn’t yet exist, or has never fought an election? Given the growing tensions in the ANC alliance, one or more ANC splinter groups could contest the 2019 elections. This could include a workers’ party established by SAFTU, the labour federation formed by former Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi. The SACP could also follow up its contestation of the Metsimaholo by-election in November 2017 by fielding its own candidates independently of the ANC in 2019. However, recent history tells us that any ANC splinter party would struggle to garner even 8 per cent of the national vote during its first few elections.

COPE was the first major group to defect from the ANC after Thabo Mbeki’s recall. Founded in 2008, COPE won 7.42 per cent of the national vote in 2011. However, the party was soon crippled by leadership squabbles, and its support collapsed to 0.48 per cent in the 2016 elections. The second ANC splinter group, the EFF, won only 6.35 per cent of the vote in its first election in 2014, increasing to 8.31 per cent in 2016. Based on the experiences of COPE and the EFF, it is highly unlikely that new ANC spinoff parties would fare much better during the next decade.

However, as was made abundantly clear in the Metsimaholo by-election, more breakaways would further weaken the ANC. With the party already in danger of losing the national government as well as the Western Cape, Gauteng and even North West in 2019, the loss of another 8–10 per cent of support to splinter groups would be catastrophic. While further splits in the ANC are unlikely to suddenly produce a new dominant player, they are sure to hasten the ANC’s decline as the hegemonic party.

The reality is that South Africa’s opposition party landscape is highly fragmented. Over the first 20 years of democracy, an ever shifting constellation of opposition groups have fought over the scraps as the mighty ANC kept chugging along. But now that the ANC is faltering, the fractured nature of opposition politics means that no single group stands at the ready to replace the ANC as a hegemonic force. If and when support for the ANC drops below 50 per cent, it will probably still be the biggest political grouping in the country. But it will no longer be the first among equals. Without an overwhelming majority that empowers the party to ride roughshod over the coalition requirements of South Africa’s electoral framework, a humbled ANC will find itself in the same position as all other parties: struggling to cobble together governing alliances. With no opposition party in a position to replace the ANC as the first among equals, the coalition era will suddenly be in full swing.

The end of forever

Two key ingredients are necessary to bake a coalition cake. First, a country must have a set of electoral rules that encourage the formation of coalition governments. Second, no single political party should be able to consistently obtain electoral majorities on its own. Instead, for coalitions to become the norm, political power must be dispersed in relatively even proportion among different political parties. Since 1994, South Africa always had the first ingredient in its cupboard, but the ANC’s electoral dominance meant that it lacked the second. Historian Hermann Giliomee’s prediction in 1998 that ‘The ANC [is] atop a dominant-party regime that figures to endure through the elections scheduled for 1999, 2004, and beyond’9 has been proven correct.

But although Jacob Zuma may still think that the ANC will rule forever, ‘forever’ is fast coming to an end. The dominant-party regime is dying. The ANC’s falling fortunes mean that, after 2019, political support will probably be divided much more evenly among South Africa’s political parties. Once this second ingredient is in place, coalition governments will follow.

What remains to be seen is whether this coalition cake will actually be a good one. After all, there is more to becoming a successful baker than just mixing together different ingredients. Just as a good cake requires the baker to understand the thermodynamics of baking, so too do political leaders and citizens require a firm understanding of the dynamics inherent in coalition governments if they are to succeed.

From 2019 onwards, any government’s efforts to improve the lives of ordinary South Africans will depend above all on their ability to build and manage successful coalitions.