South Africa: the end of one-party rule?
The African National Congress has dominated South Africa since the end of apartheid, in 1994, said Thomas Scheen in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt) – President Jacob Zuma recently boasted that the party would rule until the second coming. But in local elections last week, it lost control of many big population centres, including Port Elizabeth and the administrative capital, Pretoria. The big winners were the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA) and the radical Economic Freedom Fighters – formed by expelled ANC “firebrand” Julius Malema – which will now form coalitions in the cities, with the ANC or with each other and smaller groups. Many people blame the debacle on Zuma, who’s been persistently dogged by sex and corruption scandals. But it’s not all his fault; he’s just a symptom of complacency in a party that thinks it has a “God-given” right to rule.
It’s clear the ANC can no longer rely on “emotional appeals” to traditional loyalties, said the Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg). For its leaders, the loss of Nelson Mandela Bay, the Eastern Cape municipality glorified as the cradle of resistance to apartheid, is particularly “gut-wrenching”. But while the DA has been steadily growing its vote, overcoming its image as a “party of whites”, the ANC has offered no response. “Stunned” by the loss to its rival of the “jewelled” city of Cape Town in 2006, it descended into “ugly” infighting, allowing the DA to consolidate its hold across the whole province. The black middle class – the “clever blacks”, as Zuma derisively calls them – have taken their revenge on a man they view as unfit for office, said Justice Malala in The Guardian. It’s a “watershed” moment, because it means South Africa is no longer dominated by one party of liberation. Having for years “inched” towards a “lively” multi-party system that holds power to account, we’re now “hurtling” that way.
The ANC is still by far the strongest party, with a solid lead in rural areas, said Jan-philippe Schlüter on Tagesschau.de (Hamburg). The DA didn’t actually win over many voters. It’s more that ANC voters stayed at home; the townships saw dismal turnouts. If its leaders were to dump Zuma, replacing him with someone competent, the party could stage a recovery in the 2019 general elections. The more “gloomy” scenario is that Zuma will maintain his stranglehold, struggling on until the end of his second term and ensuring he is succeeded by a pliant crony. And that will only guarantee the ANC’S further decline.