If the African National Congress wins more than 60 percent of the votes in the April 22 general elections, it will be able to stumble towards the next elections - but nothing will stop the continuing splintering away of its support. This is the opinion of the historian, Professor Hermann Giliomee (see here).
In the 2004 elections, the ANC won 279 of the 400 National Assembly seats. Through the now-abolished provision for floor-crossing, the ANC total rose to 293 seats - from 70 percent to 73 percent. The ANC's command of parliament therefore, has hovered just under three quarters - the majority required to change the founding values of the 1996 constitution.
As April 22 approaches, political speculation is becoming both more intense and more scattershot. Some see the Congress of the People as an Mbeki front and either reject it as such, or welcome it as such. Others take on face value Mbeki's assurance that he remains a member of the (Zuma-led) ANC. The game is being nicely played with mirrors.
Most analysts think a two-thirds majority (with its grave implications of constitutional change) is beyond the ANC's reach now, following the breakaway from the ruling party and the formation of COPE. According to a Markinor poll COPE's support currently stands somewhere between eight and 12 percent of the vote. The DA's tracking poll puts it lower at between six and eight percent.
The ANC itself does not seem too confident of gaining a two thirds majority. Business Day's political editor Karima Brown reports that, based on its own internal polling, the ANC "believes it commands 66% of the vote, with six percentage points of that being ‘soft' supporters perturbed by Zuma's baggage." The Mail & Guardian meanwhile claims that, according to its sources, this (same?) internal ANC survey had found that the ruling party's current support stood at 64% (down from the 69% it enjoyed in 2004.)
Seemingly, quite a few white voters have been gazing starry-eyed at COPE as a potential saviour. Collectively, their support will count for little, considering the size of the black electorate. It would also have been gained at the expense not of the ANC but of the other opposition parties, particularly the DA. It does seem though as if the black intelligentsia, which has not benefitted directly from Polokwane, is defecting from the ruling party. Can the ANC survive with its brains blown out? The National Party could not.
With only a month left before South Africans go to the polls, time is running short for both the ANC and COPE. COPE is busy discovering to its dismay (a) how many one-time Mbeki stalwarts, fearing ANC retaliation if they openly defect now, are just air-brushing themselves out of the election scene; (b) how the millionaires Mbeki created have taken to the hills; (c) and what an unreliable creature the human species can be. As a top lawyer with 50 years of experience put it to Giliomee in Johannesburg last week: there is only one character trait in the human species you can bet on: greed.
As for the ANC, it must be wishing it had listened more carefully to Kgalema Motlanthe when (repeatedly over the years as ANC secretary general) he warned the party that branch and other structures were about as ramshackle as it was possible for a party to become. The ANC has drawn up its parliamentary lists and attended to other matters that affect mainly the upper levels of the party (the cronies and comrades). But there are 23 million voters out there, and it seems the best the ANC can do for them is to make promises in its manifesto, many of which are lavish and unaffordable.
Both sides know that it is too late now to rebuild structures: that the only option left is to play mind games. Still, from what one hears on the grapevine, the ANC is currently being given a massive injection of Viagra. Its public relations campaign is being linked with an international group with a mandate to produce a miracle. If COPE thinks it can play with mirrors, it will learn soon what it means for amateurs to take on the professionals. To get the April 22 election into some kind of perspective the important point to remember is this: Cope is the ANC without money. From what one hears of the potency of the Viagra being pumped into ANC veins, COPE will be an also ran.
Last minute surprises cannot be ruled out, particularly at the top levels. Both Cosatu and the SACP have been targeting Manuel and Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni, but the gossip is contradictory. If, say, Trevor Manuel decides at the last moment to go walkabout - say, in the vicinity of the IMF - the corporates will fall into a deep depression. But the other insider gossip is that our Trevor will be appointed Deputy President by the ANC (some of whose leaders surely must be encouraging such talk). Retaining Manuel and Mboweni in their jobs, with the independence they exercise at present, would open deep rifts within Cosatu and the SACP, and between them and the ANC (more on that later).
When politics reach such a level of intensity, the political game can turn very nasty. For many state and party officials, dependent on ANC patronage for their jobs, it is a fight now not only for a "liberation" ideology, but also physical survival. At a guess, there must be a multitude of such individuals out there, making a zillion calculations whether to out themselves as ANC, or as COPE, or just tread softly in the dark. Let's see how Mbeki's cronyism works now. And, beyond the elections, the cronies and comrades will be further torn apart as accusing fingers point at them and the deadly question asked - where were you, brother, in our hour of need?
In his article, Giliomee lists three categories of elections: the confirmation ones (where the result of an election repeats the result of the previous one); watershed elections, when the earth moves (as it did at Polokwane in December 2005); and direction-pointer elections, like the pending April 22 one, which tells South Africans to fasten their seat belts for a ride ahead - an unknown ride.
The central issue, post-elections, will be the economic course the ANC decides to take. Jacob Zuma will be president (at least for the time being), and cosily he has assured business lunches that "nothing will change." But he is a weathervane politician, not to be taken seriously on economic promises. If he has a moral compass, he has yet to reveal it. The Congress of SA Trade Unions and the SA Communist Party by contrast offer equally emphatic assurances that "everything will change," and their statements must be given some credibility, even if generally they are dismissed as part of the verbiage flooding the market.
The only other powerful Zuma backer is the ANC Youth League (flanked by the Young Communist League). But whether the ANCYL's economic views count for anything is still to be seen. Just prestige jobs and BMWs may be enough for them. This would leave Cosatu and the SACP with a tight-rope walking decision whether to adjust their left-wing economics to the inevitably panicky reaction of business leaders and would-be investors.
Between them, Cosatu and the SACP have rubbished just about every major chapter in Mbeki's economic programme which it sees as the product of "mistaken market driven policies". Their view is that although Mbeki is no longer a public player, "monopoly capital remains absolutely intact". They intend to establish "working class hegemony over the state," which is about as ominous as it comes for the corporate world.
On paper, Cosatu and the SACP leave themselves little margin for negotiation with the ANC if Zuma and company quietly continue with Mbeki economics. The SACP has its own strategy: it repeatedly sends reminders to whom to may concern that it has a Medium Term programme, which can serve as the country's economic philosophy until the moment dawns for more robust socialism. It is noticeable how the SACP is making the intellectual/theoretical running these days, leaving it to Cosatu to contribute the brawn (lobbying, strikes, intimidation).
Outside the ANC-COPE contest there are 17 other parliamentary parties among whom the Democratic Alliance (47 seats) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (27) are the major players. Whether the IFP will be severely weakened on April 22 is still to be seen: it is Zulu-based, and Zuma is a Zulu who has established a solid base in the province - either on the ANC's, or his own, behalf, as the situation requires.
As for the DA, it is extraordinarily active and innovative in shaping its election roles. Already, it controls Cape Town's 210-member council, with its leader Helen Zille as mayor. (In 2006, the DA managed to establish a seven-party coalition with a single seat majority). Now the DA is targeting the Western Cape premiership, presently held by the ANC, and is penetrating the other eight provinces, hoping to capture new ground. Coloured voters (who frequently make no attempt to disguise their dislike of aggressive black politics in "their" province) form a bloc that could swing a number of seats any which way in the April 22 elections.
Whichever way Zille plays the post-election results, the coalition factor will be pivotal. Although she is full of enthusiasm, inspiring her followers, and claims that the Cape Town coalition has "worked reasonably well", she admits that coalitions are "very difficult to manage and are inherently fragile". Wrongly played, as the National Party discovered in its flirtations with Mbeki, coalitions can be the kiss of death.
Analysts are looking long and hard at the likely shape and intentions of COPE. But they are still uncertain where it is going: whether it will remain intact as a separate party, or switch back to the ANC, or send defectors to the DA, or fragment into the other assorted opposition parties.
This is where the election leaves us. It points in a direction, but as a voting bloc the COPE support base is still too new and undefined for analysts to interpret with much precision. After the elections, no doubt we will all feel frustrated that we failed to read the signs. Hindsight is the one gift none of us are born with.
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