EIGHT BIG REASONS WHY ELECTION 2014 IS SO IMPORTANT
The election in 1994 was a milestone marking the end of white minority rule, and the conclusion of the big South African settlement. Twenty years later the issues of accountability, corruption, unemployment, racial nationalism, and populism have come to the fore. Collectively, these factors could trigger some major changes when SA goes to the polls on Wednesday May 7th.
There are eight big reasons Election 2014 is important.
1.) A strong swing towards the opposition will be an indication of the extent to which traditional ANC voters are prepared to vote against the party previously seen as the force of liberation.
In 2009, the ANC gained 65.89 percent of the vote, a drop from the 69.64 percent it achieved in the national election in 2004. If the party is pulled down close to 60 percent next week, the Zuma - Ramphosa alliance may face increasing internal challenges and be perceived as increasingly weak externally.
2.) A weak pro-ANC vote would likewise indicate that the ANC's core supporters are listening to those who urge them to stay away or spoil their ballots.
In the 2009 election, voter turnout rose by less than one percentage point to 77.3 percent. A decline of more than a few percentage points in Wednesday's vote and/or a rise in spoilt papers will be seen in certain quarters as a display of intense public dissatisfaction. At the same time a lower voter turnout and high rise in the number of spoilt ballots will pose an awkward question: if spoilers and stayers-away are gatvol with the ANC, why can't opposition parties get through to them?
The ANC is on the back foot when party activists wearing Zuma T-shirts are forced to assure supporters that a vote for the ANC is not necessarily a vote for the State President, who will "be gone in a year or two." Zuma has frequently been booed in public and seems to be losing his hold on the ruling party.
3.) A strong vote for the DA will show that opposition parties can get through to traditional ANC supporters. The DA is already the country's fastest growing political party and the most multi-racial having largely consolidated the coloured, white, and Indian vote. And is now taking on a growing number of black African members. Can the party now make significant inroads into the black electorate?
If the DA gains around or in excess of 10 percent of the black African vote next week, it would signal the start of a shift away from the politics of ethnic identity and towards a politics of ideas.
4.) A strong vote for the ANC in Kwa-Zulu Natal will tend to move us in the opposite direction - towards the politics of group identity. Mangosuthu Buthelezi's IFP has been in decline as isiZulu speakers gravitate towards Jacob Zuma's ANC, lured in part by the President's attachment to leopard skins, cattle and their manifestations of Zulu tradition. If Zuma wins big in his own back yard, resurgent identity politics is likely to become a factor in our collective future.
5.) A strong show of support for Julius Malema's radically racial nationalist Economic Freedom Fghters (EFF) will push SA politics towards radical populism. But the EFF is less than a year old and may not have had time to ensure that its predominantly young supporters are registered to vote.
6.) A strong show of indifference on the part of born frees, those born after 1994, will pass a pretty harsh judgment on South Africa's youthful democracy. If teenagers stay away in large numbers, pundits will take it to mean that they've already lost faith in the ballot's capacity to change their destiny.
7.) A victory for the opposition in Gauteng will shake the ANC to its foundations. A few weeks ago City Press revealed that the ANC's internal polls showed the ruling party might only obtain 45 percent of the Gauteng vote. The province is SA's economic powerhouse and home to almost a quarter of its population. Defeat here would be a huge blow to the ANC's prestige.
8.) A vote that is more distributed among smaller parties than in the past may mean little or nothing. There are 400 MPs and under our proportional representation system, one needs about 50,000 votes to win a single seat. Voting for one of the myriad small parties (Agang, Bushbuckridge Residents Association, Freedom Front Plus, the Minority Front plus or a similar grouping) could be tantamount to wasting your vote. Most of these parties will not win enough votes to send even a single MP to Cape Town. This election will be a good test of the viability of these etcetera parties as most voters know that one often has to go for a second best solution in choosing a party.
So yes, it's true that the outcome of the May 7th poll is a foregone conclusion -- the ANC will be returned to power, but that doesn't mean the election is meaningless. On the contrary, it is charged with high drama. Any sign that the ANC is in decline will speed up the long-awaited alignment in SA politics. Already restless, organized labour might be tempted to break away and join the EFF in the wilderness that lies to the left of the ruling alliance. By the same token, the bourgeois portion of the ANC might be tempted to break away and join the DA in a new centrist party that positions itself as an honest and effective alternative to the party of rent-seeking tenderpreneurs.
Keep an eye on Gauteng in this regard: if no party wins an outright victory, the coalition-forming machinations will show which way the wind is blowing. If the ANC forms a coalition with Malema's EFF, the whole country can expect a lurch toward the populist left. But if the ANC forms a coalition with centrist parties, it could mean a swing towards pragmatism.
Jonathan Katzenellenbogen has worked as a volunteer for the DA-Abroad, but the above are his own views.
This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.
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