On Sunday the front page lead of the Sunday Times was "Voters ditch ANC". The subheading was "South Africans fed up with party infighting and leadership vacuum." The newspaper reported that some party leaders had told them that the ANC is "in danger of losing the Western Cape in the next election" and others "said there were also concerns that the party might lose the Northern Cape and is no longer sure of majority support in Gauteng."
This is perhaps a case of a publication reporting the news as it should be, rather than as it actually is. In most other democracies the events of the past year, and the current economic downturn, would have resulted in a massive shift of support to the opposition. This is the primary mechanism through which polities correct the natural drift of a ruling class towards centralisation and corruption.
However, despite the rapid change we have seen over the past year, including the overthrow of the ANC leadership at Polokwane, political loyalties remain largely stuck in their historic patterns. Not all that much can be read into the shift against the ANC in the Western Cape. It only won 45% of the vote in that province in 2004, and recently its support among the Coloured electorate has started seriously eroding. But there is as yet no sign of the ANC's core black support deserting that party for another.
Our current party system was slowly carved out through a long period of one-party dominance, and the rising waters have yet to break through its banks. Part of the reason for this is that ANC has managed, as the National Party did before them, to embed ethnic distinctions into the very fabric of society. This places a subconscious barrier in the minds of those in the dominant group, against transferring their support to a party associated with ethnic outsiders (such as the Democratic Alliance).
It is possible then that, despite its current difficulties, the ANC could be returned to office next year with another overwhelming majority. It has been able to overcome the problem of mid-term discontent before. In 2002 an opinion poll found that only 50 percent of ANC supporters expressed satisfaction with its performance, with 49 percent dissatisfied. By 2004 the ANC had turned this sentiment around, and it went on to win a majority of just under seventy percent.
The more immediate threat to the ANC's current electoral position is some kind of breakaway by the losing faction at Polokwane. The shattering defeat of the Mbeki camp at the ANC's national conference left that grouping with little representation on the NEC [see article].
This has reduced both its ability to defend their interests within the ANC's top structures, and removed any real incentive for the winning side to accommodate them. One reflection of this is the decision by the NEC to remove the Premiers of the Eastern and Western Cape - both of whom were associated with the Mbeki's losing re-election campaign.
In an article in Business Day last week Karima Brown wrote that "Many in the Mbeki camp are indeed toying with ways to re-enter the political arena." She quoted a "senior government official" as saying "There are definite discussions about the possibility of forming an alternative."
Despite the awareness of the new leadership about this danger, there seems no real willingness to try and head it off. Last week the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema successfully urged the ANC's provincial conference in Limpopo to throw out Premier Sello Moloto and his supporters from the party leadership.
"If they are allowed to win," he told delegates, "they will do everything in their power to stop Zuma from becoming the president of the country. These people have undermined Zuma and his collective." Malema said the head of the anti-Zuma camp had been crushed at Polokwane. "Now it's the time to destroy the body."
The more senior ANC leadership seem to regard the possibility of a breakaway with equanimity. The party's Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, told Brown that any breakaway grouping "will end up like the PAC and the UDM."
Still, Mantashe may be underestimating the potential harm to the ANC. Over the first twelve years of ANC rule there was only one period in which its support, as measured in the Markdata series of opinion polls, dropped below sixty percent of the vote (non-choices excluded). This was for a brief period in 1998 -shortly after the former Transkei leader, Bantu Holomisa, went into opposition to the ANC after his expulsion from the party.
The conditions now are far more conducive to such an initiative than they were then. Ten years on the ANC no longer enjoys the same moral and political authority. The centrifugal forces - as well as the willingness of big business to bankroll some kind of alternative - are also much greater. A breakaway could well draw upon leaders, structures, and supporters across the country.
It would need to take around thirty percent of the ANC's existing support with it to deprive the Zuma-ANC of an electoral majority.
