Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Opposition parties must join forces
Agang SA has its work cut out for it if it hopes to make an impact in next year’s election, analysts tell Sue Segar
NOW THAT Mamphela Ramphele’s Agang SA has been launched, its best way forward is to move swiftly to link up with other opposition parties to form a new “superopposition-coalition”.
With the ANC under Zuma in “big trouble” and on the verge of fragmenting into smaller parties ahead of Election 2014, opposition parties must “box clever”. They must stop fishing in the same pond and join forces.
This was the view of political analyst and author William Gumede a week after last Saturday’s launch of Agang.
In an interview on Agang’s prospects, Gumede said it would have been better strategically for South Africa’s newest political party to join forces with the DA right at the outset.
“Dr Ramphele should have gone in with the attitude, ‘yes, the DA is still too white – but I’m joining it to change that’,” Gumede told Weekend Argus.
About 5 000 supporters attended the Pretoria launch of Agang, which has reportedly recruited the costly Benenson Strategy Group that helped bring US President Barack Obama to power in 2008 to advise it ahead of elections.
Analysts this week criticised Ramphele for launching the party without pulling any prominent players out of the hat to join her.
The party has, so far, focused its efforts on Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, although spokesmen say they are targeting the whole country, including youth, women and rural votes.
Ramphele has responded to fears that Agang will erode the opposition, saying 41 percent of eligible voters did not vote in 2009 – and she will target them.
Last week, UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said he and Ramphele were planning a coalition ahead of next year’s elections, adding that he had also spoken to Cope about working together.
Gumede said he struggled to imagine that Agang would get “even 5.5 percent” of the vote in next year’s poll, saying that new parties often underestimated the machinery needed to get a party off the ground.
“Had she joined forces with the DA from the start, she would have had all the machinery necessary for a political party in place, and been able to bring new constituencies into the fold.
“In this country, if you want to make an impact, you need money, machinery and warm bodies on the ground. In a typical ANC election campaign, they have about 200 000 people going door to door for the party throughout the country.
“One reason the ANC is so successful is that it is represented everywhere – in rural areas, at funerals, football matches and in stokvels.
“For any opposition party to make inroads, it must challenge the ANC at this level. The DA is struggling because it is not present in every hamlet. The difficulty is the start-up cost to do that. Strategically, Agang should have joined up with the DA to tackle that.”
Gumede said he feared Ramphele’s main appeal would be to the black and white middle classes. “They are already converted and Agang SA is going into a pool of people who will, in any case, vote for the opposition.
“Her real task is to get into the really hardcore ANC constituency.
“The ANC has a constituency that’s outside the information circle of newspapers and television, and who get information through local ANC people, so much of the truth does not reach them.
“The only way to reach them is if you have thousands of people on the ground, 24 hours a day, explaining the issues, like Guptagate and Nkandla, in the language of the people you want to reach.”
Gumede said another problem facing Ramphele was that “a lot of black people support her but don’t want to be seen with her.
“A number of constituencies in the ANC are unhappy and believe Zuma is going to do badly in the elections, but are sitting back waiting to see how the ANC performs.
“These are influential people, who are just waiting. Nobody wants to make a big decision now. “That is a real challenge.” Even less optimistic about Agang’s success was Professor Susan Booysen, political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Booysen said that while political dynamics could change closer to April, she believed Agang’s prospects in 2014 would be “quite dismal” and probably in the 1 percent to 2 percent range.
“The strains of managing a minor party through layers of institutional representation are immense. It is impossible to make, with certainty, the assertion that she will make inroads into the 41 percent of eligible voters who did not vote in 2009.
“It is quite possible that she would get votes from the bloc of previously inactives. Yet, first she has no way of guaranteeing this will be a predominant source and, second, the DA got much new support in 2009 and this support is not yet consolidated. Third, she is quite likely to draw some (although not masses of) support from Cope’s ranks.”
Booysen said Ramphele would, nevertheless, bring an interesting new “flavour” to South African politics. “Race and reasonable political credibility do matter in party political leadership… and she will be able to add to political debates once she moves beyond the platitudes and clichés of her launch lines. Even if she becomes a minor party in Parliament, it could make a modest difference to debates.”
Political analyst and futurist Daniel Silke said Ramphele’s entry into party politics would usher in a “much more competitive political era” in South Africa.
“She has the potential to explore a segment of the electorate and garner support from those who are disappointed with the performance of the ANC, but find it difficult to support any other opposition party, particularly the DA, for historic reasons. This is really where she needs to focus her attention.
“Her launch speech did look as though she was directly targeting this group rather than attempting to muscle in on the broader opposition vote.”
Silke said Ramphele succeeded in projecting a “very aggressive battle tone” in her opening address. “She took the battle directly to the ANC and, in particular, President Zuma.
“This certainly sets the scene for her to become a vocal and aggressive player in the run-up to the election.”
Despite stressing that Ramphele was “completely untested” when it came to assessing her potential electoral support, Silke put out a predic- tion of between 5 percent and 10 percent of the electorate for Agang.
These would predominantly comprise former ANC supporters looking for an alternative political home.
Silke said it was critically important to the opposition that Ramphele did not simply split the existing opposition vote “and that she mobilises a vote that hitherto has not committed itself as yet to voting for an opposition party”.
“This is where her strength in the South African political system lies. She has the potential to disrupt existing party loyalties and that will add to greater competition and fluidity in the political process.”
Silke said a key weakness at the launch was that Ramphele came across as a “one-person show”. “She desperately needs high-profile, credible political henchmen, even those disaffected from other political parties, particularly the ANC.”
Second, she failed to outline concrete policies and differentiate herself from the DA.
“She could score impressive voter numbers in Limpopo, given that it is her home province and is particularly badly run by the ANC, as well as in the Eastern Cape, which potentially has a large number of disaffected ANC voters.”
Independent political analyst Dr Somadoda Fikeni estimated that Agang could garner between 3 percent and 10 percent of the votes.
Fikeni said he believed Agang would attract a section of young blacks. “But that, in itself, won’t be a huge dent in the ANC.
“Agang will definitely erode some of the opposition support, particularly the DA. But, she was careful not to attack the record of the other opposition parties and this might be opening up the possibility for coalitions for the local government elections.
“Political pluralism is always good for democracy. Though sometimes it leads unintentionally to the fragmentation of the opposition.
“But to have as many voices raising issues in Parliament can only be welcomed as a healthy injection for our democracy.”
Fikeni said opponents might use Ramphele’s close relationship with the corporate sector to attack her record.
“Her pedigree and political life of struggle was in the Black Consciousness Movement. But there are no signs of that ideology in her message, which may suggest she’s broken away from (that) fold.
“The question will be how parties like Azapo and the PAC react to her new party. Will they try to attack even that record of hers to preserve their constituency and, if so, what harm will that cause?”