There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

-  William Shakespeare, Julius Caeser

Last week’s local government elections have generally been interpreted as a resounding electoral set-back for the African National Congress. The party lost its majority in three metros in Gauteng and saw its share of the national vote fall to 54.5%. Should they choose to combine forces opposition parties meanwhile are in a position to take control of Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, where the DA won a plurality of the vote, as well as Johannesburg and a number of other smaller municipalities across the country.

Whether the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters will be able to set aside their massive ideological differences and choose to work together is the great political question of the next two weeks. It is useful at this point to sketch out the electoral logic behind opposition coalitions trying to take control of as many municipalities as possible.

As can be seen from Table 1 the ANC’s share of the vote always declined in local government elections, relative to the preceding national elections. This was largely due, in the past, to the the opposition being better able to get their supporters (back) to the polls in the local government elections than the ANC was.

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Table 1: ANC share of the vote nationally, in national and local government elections 1994 - 2016

While the fall-off in ANC percentage support this time around is greater than before, the party did experience a similar percentage point drop between 1999 and 2000. The fall-off between 2009 and 2011 would also have been a few percentage points greater had it not been for the implosion of COPE’s support during this period.

In this election the ANC’s number of voters (as measured by votes on the PR ballot) dropped in absolute terms by 3,25 million from 2014. (This is actually fewer than the 3,31m fall off between 2009 and 2011). By contrast, both the DA and the EFF were able to get a similar, or greater, number of their voters to the polls, than they had two years before. This differential turnout largely accounted for the decline in the ANC’s share of the national vote.

Table 2: ANC and opposition support in national and local government elections 2009 to 2016

The DA’s success was not achieved through any kind of magical breakthrough but through hard won, incremental gains. As the political analyst (and former DA staffer) Dawie Scholtz noted in his commentary on the election the party won the registration battle with the ANC beforehand by getting more of its potential supporters registered to vote; got their suburban base out to vote on the day en masse; and made small but significant inroads into the township vote.

While the opposition has eroded the ANC’s national margin of victory in this election this does not, in and of itself, mean all that much for 2019. All the ANC would need to do to win comfortably next time is to erase the turnout differential and get its usual 11 million or so voters to the polls – something it has achieved, without too much difficulty, in the past.

The ANC’s electoral majority remains, thus far, extraordinarily difficult to dislodge – even in the most unpromising of circumstances. It went into this election internally divided, with a highly unpopular leader mired in scandal, with the country’s economy flirting with recession, and it was still able to win a comfortable majority of the vote in a type of poll it always has done relatively poorly in.

What is still holding everything together for the ANC, despite all the punishment it has suffered over the past decade, is its control over the state. The South African Revenue Service and Treasury now collect or borrow close to well over a trillion-and-a-half rands. This money then flows downwards on social grants, salaries (often used to support extended families), student bursaries, contracts, and so on. This binds ordinary people into the system, and particularly the poor. High and growing unemployment, which is by far the major concern of voters, actually increases this sense of dependency on the ANC government. Apart from the state salaries paid to its public representatives; corrupt tenders, pay-outs, and patronage appointments within the state and parastatal sector allow the party and the dominant faction within it to shore up internal unity and control.

There are two recent examples in recent history of what can happen though when the ANC, or a formerly dominant faction within it, loses control over the state.

The first is the experience of COPE. In December 2007 almost the entire ANC leadership –one which had secured 69.7% of the national vote for the party only three years before - was tossed out of office at the party’s Polokwane national conference. The COPE breakaway led and supported by elements in this losing faction and initially enjoying substantial popular support and press attention soon withered away after it found itself permanently on the outside of government and in the cold.

The second is the example of the Western Cape. In the 2006 local government elections the DA managed to cobble together a governing coalition in Cape Town after winning 41,2% of the vote in the municipality to the ANC’s 37,8% and the Independent Democrats 10,8%. This then provided the base from which the party was able to win a majority in the Western Cape provincial elections in 2009. The DA, which absorbed the Independent Democrats in this period, has increased its share of the vote in the province from 39.2% in 2006 to 63.6% in 2016. The ANC meanwhile has, despite continued in-migration from the Eastern Cape over the past decade, seen its share of the vote declining from 41% to 26,5%. The DA now has a two-thirds majority on the City of Cape Town council.

Table 3: DA, ID and ANC support in the Western Cape elections 2006 to 2016

In both of these cases former or current ANC politicians have struggled to maintain internal cohesion or their grip over their core support, once deprived of the levers of patronage.

It is not necessarily in Zuma’s interests that the Gauteng ANC remains in control over Johannesburg and Tshwane ahead of the party’s 2017 national conference, as this group forms the core of what opposition there still is to him and his faction. It is very probable, in any event, that his faction will triumph regardless next year and slate voting will see the expulsion of SACP and Gauteng ANC leaders from the party’s national leadership. In these circumstances it is perhaps better for all those concerned about a continued slide into tyranny that metros like Johannesburg and Tshwane remain safely outside the ZANC’s grasp.

In the unlikely event the ANC does drop Zuma and puts in place a better and more popular leadership, opposition parties are going to have a far harder time of it at the next national poll.

All this means that while the ANC’s defences have certainly been breached in this election the opposition will only be able to secure a more enduring electoral advance if they are able to combine and take control of the metros (and other municipalities) where they now form the majority.

This will cut significant strands of patronage still tying the ANC to the electorate. If the opposition then governs cleanly and well it will dispel enduring voter concerns about EFF leaders (that they will be tenderpreneurial and corrupt once back in government) and the DA (that it will seek to reintroduce apartheid).

These election results thus present the opposition with a historic opportunity that may well not manifest itself again. The next two weeks will reveal whether they are able to seize the moment, or will let it slip from their grasp.