Changing trends will make polls a tight to call
I was recently taken to task for saying that the upcoming national and provincial elections on May 8 will be among the most competitive since the dawn of democracy in SA. The statement is borne out by the state of the ANC and opposition, the DA in particular, which are all not guaranteed full-out victories even in their strongholds. Frankly, it is not that a more credible alternative to the ANC has suddenly arisen since the 2014 general election and the 2016 local government elections.
The outcome of the 2016 local elections in the big metros in Gauteng and in Nelson Mandela Bay were significant not only in that the ANC lost its majority but that voters didn’t give a clear mandate to any of the country’s big parties. In 2014, we saw the trend of voters splitting their votes, voting for one party at the national level and another at the provincial level. This is a statement that all three of the major parties, the ANC, DA and the EFF have a lot to do to convince the electorate that they have the policies and programmes that will address their concerns. Under these circumstances smaller parties are also in with an opportunity to get the nod from voters willing to experiment. Much research that has come out over the last few years, concerned about how to make the country’s electoral politics more competitive and elected representatives more accountable, has located the solution in electoral system reform. My own work in this regard confirms that although going full on first-past-the-post with its winner takes all consequence is not the optimum, adding elements of it into the current proportional representation system to have a mixed system at the national and provincial levels is desirable. Thinking that locates change at the institutional level blinds us from exploring and understanding how this country’s citizens have transcended being discontented communities protesting over lack of responsiveness to their needs. Voters have become more sophisticated with every election. They employ strategy to eke out some semblance of accountability from politicians who have become increasingly complacent.
The ANC has spent the period since the last election further chipping away at its liberation dividend. And the DA has been scoring own goals with its internal ructions.
In contrast, the EFF has been exploiting the gaps by radicalising its base, putting pressure on the political and economic establishment to adopt socialisttype policies.
It has also been using its ability to swing council votes in favour of or against the two big wigs in the country’s contested metros to force the adoption of programmers such as insourcing of security guards and cleaners as well as bringing services to informal settlements . Much of the success (or failure) of political parties will depend on their ability to get their supporters to voting stations on voting day. The obsession with the ANC’s electoral dominance has led even keen election observers to underplay the competitiveness of the country’s elections.