JOHANNESBURG - In the municipal by-elections held across the country last week the ANC won 23 out of 27 wards contested. It lost four wards it had held previously, but managed to pick up three. The Congress of the People meanwhile won two of the by-elections, with the Democratic Alliance and Independent Democrats picking up one each. On the face of it the results were a major setback for COPE - a number of councillors who had resigned from the ANC to join the party failed to win back their seats. However, when one looks in detail at the results the picture is not quite as gloomy for the breakaway, or as bright for the ruling party, as it might first appear.
The turnout across the 27 by-elections was fairly high. It averaged 44,6%, not that far below the 52,7% in the 2006 local government elections. In addition, the average was brought down by a couple of by-elections in Gauteng which were not seriously contested and so had very low turnout. The one province where the ANC made clear gains was in KwaZulu Natal, where it won two seats off the Inkatha Freedom Party substantially increasing its share of the vote.
Elsewhere, the general trend was of a significant but not precipitous decline in the ANC's share of the vote. In Alice in the Eastern Cape the ANC had won 97.6% of the vote in the 2006 election. The ward seat had fallen open after the death of a councillor and both the ANC and COPE contested it. This time around the ANC candidate received 73,4% to the COPE candidate's 25,9%. In the by-election in Adelaide in the Eastern Cape the ANC won 55,5% of the vote compared to COPE's 19,13%. The ANC's share of the vote was up here, as the seat had previously been held by the Adelaide Resident's Association.
In Botshebelo in the Free State three ward seats were contested following the resignation of ANC councillors who then re-stood as candidates for COPE. In these wards COPE picked up an average of 17,8% of the vote. The ANC's share of the vote meanwhile dropped to 79% from the 90% it had received in 2006.
COPE seems to have established relatively small but still significant pockets of support in Limpopo. In a by-election in Greater Tzaneen the COPE candidate picked up 11,3% to the ANC candidate's 86% (95,6% in 2006). In Musina, in a ward the DA won from the ANC with a slim majority, COPE picked up 9,1% of the vote to the ANC's 37,8%.
The most meaningful results were from the Northern Cape - where 15 by-elections were held following the resignation of a string of ANC ward councillors to join COPE. Although the ANC won back 12 of the 15 wards - losing two to COPE and one to the ID - its share of the vote declined by a quarter (from 73,3% to 54,1%). COPE meanwhile won, on average, a not insubstantial 30,1% of the vote. This compares to the 27,3% of the vote it won in the 12 by-elections it contested against the ANC in the Western Cape in December last year (see here). (The DA chose not participate in any of these Northern Cape by-elections.)
These by-election results can obviously not be used to make any hard and fast predictions about the likely results of the provincial and national elections later this year. The fact that in many of these wards the COPE candidate was the former ANC councillor may have boosted the party's support in these specific constituencies. Against this, by-elections can be won through good organisation and getting your supporters to the polls - and here the ANC (with its formidable resources) has a significant edge over COPE.
The results do though provide some indications of likely voter trends. The ANC does seem to be consolidating support in KwaZulu-Natal, at the expense of the IFP. Elsewhere in the country though its support has declined, but by not so much as to threaten its national majority. Still, areas which once monolithically backed the ANC now have a significant opposition presence. If the support patterns witnessed in the by-elections in the Northern Cape are carried over to the rest of the province, the ANC may have difficulty holding onto its majority there.
Although COPE is not doing too badly, its problem is that it is not doing quite well enough either. Given its relatively weak organisational and financial base it needed to build up a sense of momentum going into the 2009 elections. Although it started out well, it recently seems to have stalled. There are doubtless many ANC public representatives who would like to defect and join the new party. But they are currently sitting tight because they seem to view that as the safer option.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline newsletter
