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ANC’S CRUSHING ELECTORAL DEFEAT  
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Gunnett Kaaf
June 28, 2024
Socialist Project
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_ A Nightmare of Coalitions, Splits and Neoliberal Crisis. _

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South Africa is in the throes of a deepening political and social
crisis. The precipitous electoral loss of the African National
Congress (ANC) by a whopping 17 percentage points, from 57% to 40% in
general elections held on 29 May 2024
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was a signal of this deepening political and social crisis. It was a
decisive rejection of the ANC by voters, following the ANC’s
political dominance for 30 years, during which the ANC presided over a
neoliberal economic development that wrought dire development outcomes
such as a high level of unemployment, massive poverty, huge income and
wealth inequality, rural and urban underdevelopment and poor delivery
of basic public services by the state. This was accompanied by a
widespread corruption within the state, leading to a decline of
confidence in public institutions.

The voters have rejected the ANC for its neoliberal development
project and its wide spread corruption within the state in the last 30
years. But voters did not vote for a party to succeed the ANC as a
ruling party; even worse, they did not vote for parties that will help
exit the deepening neoliberal crisis. The viable alternatives that are
needed to exit the neoliberal crisis cannot be found among mainstream
parties. That’s why South Africa is in the throes of a deepening
political and social crisis.

Going into this election, it was largely expected that ANC was to fall
below 50%. That is a big dynamic of this election because it implies
the break of the ANC’s 30-years-long dominance of electoral
politics, since the official fall of apartheid in 1994.

Political Shockwaves

Most survey polls before the elections were putting ANC at 45%,
tending toward 40%. But then the general expectation was that the ANC
was going to get anything between 45% to 50%. In that case, forming a
coalition government would not be such a nightmare because they would
simply pick up small parties to patch up to get 50% plus. Now that the
fall is so steep at 40%, shockwaves have been sent throughout the
political system in South Africa.

Another big shocker of this election was the spectacular performance
by former President, Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe
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(MK) party [not to be confused with the military wing of the ANC],
just after six months after its formation. MK won 14.58% of the
national vote, and received 45% in Kwazulu-Natal province, which is
the second largest province where some 20% of the SA population lives.
They also registered significant electoral victories in Gauteng, the
province with the largest share(24%) of the population, and in
Mpumalanga where they won 17% of the provincial vote, bringing the ANC
down from 70% to 51%. MK’s surge definitely happened at the expense
of the ANC, because they share the same electoral base with the ANC.
MK is a splinter party that was formed by Jacob Zuma, a former
president of the ANC and the country, who enjoys large popularity
among ANC members and supporters, despite being corrupt and
conservative.

This article analyses the political and social dynamics that set the
context for the ANC’s crushing electoral defeat and the implications
of the election results for the realignment of political and social
forces.

Why Did the ANC Dominate for 30 years, Without a Challenge?

The first democratic election of April 1994 was a victory of the
national liberation struggle over apartheid. Led by Nelson Mandela,
the ANC won the 1994 election by a landslide victory of 62 % and
earned the mantle of being the sole party of national liberation, with
a mandate to lead the people to the promised land of a truly liberated
South Africa, where there is “a better life for all.” The ANC
earned the sole mantle of being a party of national liberation because
other liberation movements that fought in the struggle against
apartheid, alongside the ANC, had significantly weakened by 1994 and
never revived the post-apartheid South Africa.

From the 1980s into early 1990s, the ANC succeeded in inserting itself
within and allying itself with major mass movements of the
anti-apartheid historical bloc, organised around the United Democratic
Front, which included hundreds of affiliates drawn from the youth and
students movements, the civics, trade unions, the women’s movement,
church organisations, sports organisations etc. In a way, the ANC
succeeded in establishing itself as the leader of a powerful
anti-apartheid historical bloc going into 1994 and beyond. So, for the
first 15 years, even up to 20 years, of the last 30 years, the ANC
enjoyed large active support, deriving from the legitimacy it had as a
governing party of national liberation, following the fall of
apartheid. Thus, it was difficult to effectively challenge the ANC
from outside.

However, these mass movements allied to the ANC were autonomous and
often challenged the ANC leadership when it was necessary. For
instance, the Congress of South African Trade Unions(Cosatu) fiercely
challenged the ANC when it adopted a neoliberal macroeconomic policy,
Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) in 1996. It was GEAR that
significantly consolidated the neoliberal restructuring of the economy
in post-apartheid South Africa from a coherent policy framework.

By 1999, the ANC succeeded in co-opting a considerable number of the
leading personnel of mass movements into government and business
positions, through affirmative action and black economic empowerment
schemes. Civics were no longer independent social movements of
residents organised within the South African National Civic
Organisation (SANCO), they had now joined the ANC led alliance with
the South African Communist Party and Cosatu, to make it tripartite
plus one. Once the leadership of mass movements was co-opted by the
ruling ANC, and their autonomy was lost, these mass movements
eventually collapsed into the ANC fold, leading to the dissolution of
the anti-apartheid historical bloc in the early 2000s.

Thirty years is certainly a long enough period to fail, trying to
pursue a development strategy and trying again, and again, until you
succeed. But with the ANC, the failure has been dismal because they
were not committed to any sovereign radical development project.
Instead, they succumbed fully to the dominant neoliberal development
philosophy that allots a decisive role to market forces.

As the neoliberal crisis, of dire development outcomes combined with
widespread corruption within the state, was reaching maturity around
2009, the ANC’s legitimacy started to seriously erode. At this
stage, the transformation of the of the ANC from a leftist national
liberation movement into a centrist neoliberal party had come full
circle, with the ANC fully established as an agency of neoliberal
economic development and a link to international finance capital. To
this you add the widespread corruption of the ANC that was already
running very deep within the state.

Thus, from 2009, when Zuma who is associated with the worst forms of
corruption, ascended to presidency, the ANC electoral decline has been
irreversible. They declined from 69.69% in 2004 to 65.90% in 2009, to
62.10% in 2014, down to 57.50% in 2019. As you can see though the
decline has been a solid trajectory, it was with smaller margins of
3.79 and 3.80 to 4.60 percentage points. That is why this election’s
crushing defeat of 17 percentage points, from 230 seats to 159 seats
in the National Assembly, has shocked them to the core. It caught them
off guard; whilst dreaming in their slumber about their self-convinced
eternal dominant might; “the glorious movement” as they are fond
of referring to the ANC.

What could have halted and reversed this decline, is a genuine renewal
of the ANC to rid itself of corruption and pursue a genuinely
meaningful social transformation that fulfils the promise of a better
life for all, by redistributing income and wealth in favour of the
black majority, extending social wage to include a basic income,
pursuing a sovereign industrial policy and improving the delivery of
public services such as health, education, housing, public transport,
etc.

ANC Engaged in a Fake Renewal

But sadly the ANC instead engaged in a fake renewal process; they have
been pretending to be engaged in a renewal process to self-correct,
since Jacob Zuma left the ANC presidency in 2017. This sham of a
renewal process has made matters worse for them because they claimed
they were ditching corruption and embarking on a radical economic
transformation; to restructure the Reserve Bank, implement a radical
land reform, and redistribute wealth and income for the benefit of the
poor black majority. None of this happened, because they were never
committed.

Now they are more discredited, even worse than in the Zuma years,
because they don’t have a Zuma and other discredited corrupt
elements to scapegoat for their mess. If you want to see that did they
did nothing about corruption, look no further than their list of
members of parliament due to be sworn in following this election. You
will see many of those implicated by a statutory commission of inquiry
into state capture and corruption (the Zondo Commission). The minster
of sports and culture was arrested just a week after elections, on
charges of receiving bribes worth R1.6-million ($89,000) from a
business man who received government contracts worth R400-million
($22-million).

Worse even, their current President, Cyril Ramaphosa, whose ascent to
high office was based on an anti-corruption ticket, has a big cloud
hanging over his head: the Phala Phala scandal that involves the theft
of a stack of cash of more than half a million US dollars from his
Phala Phala farm, of which the real source remains unexplained.

In November 2022, the ANC used its majority in parliament, to block
the impeachment inquiry arising from serious violations and crimes by
the President at Phala Phala, as established _prima facie_ by the
Independent Panel of two retired judges and one senior advocate. The
formal reason they advanced when they were quashing the recommended
parliamentary inquiry was that the President had taken the report of
the Independent Panel on review in court. Once the ANC parliamentary
majority voted down the report, the President went back to court to
withdraw his review on grounds that the report of the Independent
Panel had become academic since parliament had rejected it. Those were
pure monkey tricks of the ANC to evade accountability!

The matter of Phala Phala has now been taken to the Constitutional
Court by Economic Freedom Fighters, to challenge the irrational
decision of parliament by ANC majority. The EFF application has been
set down for hearing in the coming months. If the court rules that
parliament acted irrationally on the Phala Phala matter, and refers it
back to parliament conduct impeachment inquiry that will destabilise
the new Government of National Unity(GNU). More about the GNU below.

The arrest of the speaker of parliament following a
R4.5-million($25,000) bribe scandal in April 2024, during an election
period, also added fuel to the flames.

Unemployment, low growth rates, low investment levels, inequality,
poverty, the poor delivery of public services including health,
education and housing, and the deterioration of public infrastructure
have all gotten worse since Ramaphosa took over at the 2017 ANC
conference, on the back of a radical economic transformation that was
going to improve the lot of the poor black masses. There are no
radical policy interventions that have been put in place since Cyril
took over. So both the proclaimed anti-corruption stance and radical
economic policies, which are the twin pillars of the sham ANC renewal,
have fallen flat.

On the contrary, we have witnessed heightened neoliberal austerity of
budget cuts in important public services, including health, education,
housing and roads, and on government workers’ wages. Austerity has
also extended to the reactionary, tight monetary policy of increasing
interest rates. This is supposed to fight off inflation. But that
inflation that did not come from the oversupply of money as a result
of wages increases or a high consumer spending, but came from price
increases by monopoly corporations and from imports due to breaks in
global supply chains, following the Covid slump. This fiscal and
monetary austerity has worsened the cost of living for poor families,
workers and the middle classes.

The Neoliberal Crisis and the Rise Rightwing Forces Such As MK

The neoliberal crisis tends to polarize societies through inequality
and other exclusive development outcomes such as unemployment,
precarious labour, poverty, underdevelopment and the squeezing of the
middle classes. Add to this, the discredited ruling classes (both the
political and economic), a declining democracy, and the absence of a
coherent radical sovereign development project to exit the impasse of
the neoliberal crisis. This social decay has set the stage for the
far-right and neofascist forces to rise and mobilise on the basis of
social exclusion and blaming others; mainstream parties and
institutions, including foreigners and other racial groups.

The lower voter turnouts over the past two elections is a sign of a
declining democracy, where the voter turnout was 66% in 2019, dropping
from 73% in 2014 and dropping further down to the low of 58% now in
2024.The voter turnout is has always been in the 70’s, except for
1999 where it was 89%. This is worse when you include the fact that 15
million eligible voters did not bother to register to vote. This means
that out of 42 million eligible voters, only 16 million turned up to
vote in this election, which puts the actual voter turnout at 38%.

It is in this context of the social decay and crisis of neoliberal
capitalism that rightwing populist parties such as MK, tend to gain
the center stage by blaming the ruling ANC without presenting any
viable alternative. Even though they use an anti-capitalist and the
radical economic transformation, they don’t really mean it, they
only do it to mobilise the working classes and poor communities who
constitute their base.

Apart from exploiting the neoliberal crisis without posing a positive
vision, MK was riding on the popularity of corrupt and reactionary
Jacob Zuma within the ANC base. MK tends to be more strong in the KZN
and two other provinces with a significant size of Zulu ethic
communities, Gauteng and Mpumalanga. This is because Zuma is steeped
in Zulu nationalism politics and cultural identity/symbolism.

However the decisive factor in MK’s spectacular electoral
performance is Zuma’s popularity within the ANC’s electoral base.
That is why ANC’s demolition from 54% to a low of 16.99% in KZN can
only be attributed to the spectacular rise of MK, which got 45% in
KZN. MK acquired a large electoral support in KZN by dispossessing the
ANC because of Zuma who is popular among ANC supporters.

Despite MK’s posture as a leftist party, in their manifesto, they
openly declares support of conservative ideas such as giving more
constitutional power to unaccountable traditional leaders and even
making elected politicians subordinate to traditional leaders. They
also declare that they will abolish the checks and balances that come
with the current constitutional order, and replace it with an
unchecked order of a parliamentary supremacy wherein “the
majority” will rule unconstrained by the checks from the judiciary.
They also make it clear that they will bring back the apartheid era
military conscription to instill discipline in our youth.

The other rightwing populist party that was on the rise in this
election is the Patriotic Alliance that won 9 seats in the National
Assembly. PA is led by two ex-convicts who mobilise the mixed race
communities(who make up 8.2% against the 81.4% black African) on a
racialised communitarian ideology that combines with a crude ferment
of xenophobia that openly calls for the expulsion of all foreigners,
irrespective of their legal status.

Dilemmas of Forming Coalition Government for the ANC

Now that the ANC got 40% of the vote, the shortfall to form a
government is too big. Unlike the expected 45%, in which case they
would simply ask small parties into a coalition, and they would be
spared the drama that comes with big parties. The three big
parties-DA, EFF and MK – bring drama into coalition negotiations
because of their diametrically opposed ideologies and policies.

Democratic Alliance (DA) is a liberal conservative party that is
openly steeped in neoliberal policy positions that include: fiscal and
monetary austerity, privatization, free trade, flexible exchange rate,
cuts in public spending, tax reductions for corporates and high-income
earners, deregulation of business activities, liberalisation of
capital controls, labour market flexibility. They also don’t support
transformation policies that in the context of South Africa that are
aimed at bringing about substantiative social equality that do away
with the legacy of apartheid and colonialism and mitigate the effects
of the neoliberal crisis. These include affirmative action, land
reform that transfers land to black communities, national minimum
wage, workers rights, national health insurance, basic income grant.

The transformation policies that the DA opposes are mandated in the
country’s Constitution, so as to realise Bill of Rights and the
substantive social equality through the progressive realisation of
socio-economic rights.

The social base of the DA is the white community that makes up only
7.3% of the SA population(4.7 million whites out a total population of
62 million), yet they remain most economically and socially privileged
and powerful racial group, 30 years after the official fall of
apartheid because genuine social transformation measures that redress
past imbalances and advance a better life for all, were never
implemented after 1994.

The option of a coalition with the DA was initially rejected by the
mass base and the left wing of the ANC, in its National Executive
Committee, by the SACP and COSATU. But it was the preferred option by
the ANC establishment, so they found a way to impose it from above.

The difference between ANC’s neoliberalism and DA’s is that the DA
is open and actively committed in its articulation of neoliberal
policies, whereas the ANC’s embrace of neoliberalism is because
their lack of a sovereign development strategy and bourgeois
capitulation out of pressure from big business and finance capital.
That’s why the ANC still has a leftist National Democratic
Revolution political strategy, even though it is inadequate, and a
social wage to protect the poor from extreme poverty, even though it
gets limited by budget cuts stemming the austerity fiscal policy they
pursue.

The ANC could go into a coalition with Economic Freedom Fighters. The
EFF has made it clear that it will not go into a coalition that has
DA, this is despite their backing of the DA in local governments,
following 2016 election results that did not produce outright winners,
like in this 2024 elections. On the other hand, DA has also made it
clear that they will not go in coalition where EFF is also a partner.
This made it difficult for the ANC to have both the EFF and DA in one
coalition government at the same time, thus the ANC chose the DA.

The EFF is a leftist nationalist organisation that is led by the
charismatic Julious Malema, who was ANC’s youth league in 2012 when
he was expelled in 2012 for advocating the nationalisation of mines
and expropriation of land without compensation. He, together with his
fellow youth league comrade, Floyd Shivhambo, with whom he was
expelled from the ANC, formed the EFF in 2013. The EFF is typical
bourgeois parliamentary party that is only interested in political
office. Though they sound more radical than the ANC, they are cut from
the same cloth as the ANC and are trapped in old, exhausted national
liberation ideological framework. They don’t have a clear left
vision of challenging the neoliberal capitalism that has been
developing in South Africa over the last 30 years. They are stagnating
around 10% of the vote, for two successive elections now. And because
they have their eyes on government office, they are becoming fatigued
and frustrated with voters and venting in a way that shows the
strategic limitations of left politics that purport to advance the
social demands of the popular classes. The other day, Malema said they
will no longer support poor communities that do not vote for them.

MK does not seem willing to participate in a coalition with the ANC.
There is just too much hostility between the two.

A better coalition option for the ANC that could succeed without drama
of big parties, would be working with small parties. But the ANC is
not inclined toward this option. They did not go for this option
because they thought ignoring the DA when it was such a highly
preferred choice of big business and finance capital would be suicidal
in the context of their own sworn neoliberal ideology that they have
been committed to over the last 30 years.

But if the ANC was prepared to ditch neoliberalism, as their own
renewal process promises, they would embark on building a sovereign
economic project that would be so robust so as to withstand the shocks
coming from the backlash of capital and financial markets, at least in
the medium to long term. In that case the effect of the backlash would
only be a temporary setback. The option of working with small parties,
without the DA, remains unattractive to them but not because it
can’t work. It can work if they changed their economic policy and
thinking, but they have no courage nor the inclination to ditch
neoliberalism and move toward a sovereign development project that
delinks from the neoliberal global capitalism. That’s why the
political and social crisis is going to get worse. The ANC is simply
not capable of resolving it.

The ANC has announced that they are forming a coalition with the DA as
the main partner. They call this coalition a Government of National
Unity. This so called GNU does not have clear a purpose or criterion
of establishment distinct from an ordinary coalition, unlike the GNU
which was constitutionally prescribed in 1994, and had a clear purpose
of managing the transition from white minority rule to a democratic
dispensation. The 2024 GNU is all about deals between parliamentary
parties. The negotiations for this so called GNU are conducted in a
veil of secrecy, the public only gets to know of the deals once they
are finalised. Twenty-five days after voting the composition of
national government was yet to be announced. This has never happened
before.

Alongside the GNU, they have called for a National Dialogue process
– involving political parties, civil society, labour, business, and
other sectors – to discuss critical challenges facing the country
and develop a national social compact to enable the country to meet
the aspirations of the neoliberal National Development Plan (NDP).
This National Dialogue is already a nonstarter, a failure, because it
seeks to enforce a neoliberal consensus based on an already failed
neoliberal development strategy, the NDP itself.

In all honesty it is not a GNU, but a coalition based on a neoliberal
pact that is already on shacky grounds because it cannot address the
very social and political crisis that gave rise to it, within the
framework of neoliberalism.

The GNU minimum programme that has been announced does not herald a
break with the neoliberalism of the past 30 years. It’s all
neoliberal business as usual. Only revolutionary measures can help us
to exit the neoliberal crisis. The ANC-DA government cannot meet that
challenge. Even if the coalition will finally include EFF and more
parties in the final deal to make it a grand coalition, for has long
as neoliberalism is not abandoned, and replaced with audacious
measures, the deep social crisis will persist and get worse. It is up
to the left and popular classes to pose a radical political challenge.
Without revolutionary measures such as income and wealth
redistribution, state-led sovereign industrialisation with a
corresponding macro-economic management that delinks from neoliberal
global system, the deal-making of the political elites will deepen the
social crisis instead of building national cohesion and unity.

The Way Forward From a Left Perspective: Prospects for a Left Renewal
in South Africa

The left was absent in this election because it is too weak as a
political force. Of course there are small left parties such as the
Bolsheviks Party of South Africa and African People’s Convention
that participated but performed way dismally, did not get a seat in
the national assembly or any of the provincial legislatures. The left
will be absent in all future elections if does not rebuild strong
political and social forces to pose radical alternatives on the
electoral terrain and beyond. The left has to rebuild by intensifying
mass struggles that advance social demands of popular classes as they
build formidable mass movements. These demands are easy to articulate
because the deepening neoliberal crisis has accentuated them in the
dire developmental outcomes it has produced; high levels of
unemployment, massive poverty, huge wealth and income inequalities,
underdevelopment in rural and urban areas, the energy crisis, and the
ecological crisis.

Popular classes and the left must organise and wage struggles for
pressing social demands which include the basic income grant,
permanent employment in public sector schemes and industries, and the
delivery of quality free basic services such as housing, sanitation,
water, electricity, roads, education, health, transport, and
communication. These can be easily sacrificed by a version of national
unity that will require respect for the markets and investors. The
ANC-DA coalition means that workers, poor communities and the
unemployed must develop the capacity, means and tools to sustain their
vigilance against.

The ANC crisis has become an intrinsic part of the neoliberal
capitalist crisis deepening in our country and globally. A meaningful
exit out of this crisis is not to renew or reform the ANC. That is not
possible. The ANC has to be transcended by a social revolutionary
advance in order to exit from the deepening neoliberal crisis. Mass
movements waging mass struggles and registering decisive victories
must be built urgently. Of course, that has to be done outside
elections but then exert political weight on elections, on the basis
of political victories scored before elections, not after. Failure by
the left and popular classes to live up to this task and challenge
will perpetuate the ruinous crisis as it gets worse. •

Gunnett Kaaf is a Marxist activist and writer, who is with Zabalaza
Pathways Institute [[link removed]], South Africa.

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