Voters abandon ANC, but opposition parties fail to inspire confidence

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JEREMY MAGGS: Now, just hours now before South Africans vote in the local government elections, and a new Ipsos (Independent Polling System of Society) poll is painting a picture of a deeply divided electorate.

ANC (African National Congress) support falling to record lows. The Democratic Alliance (DA) is gaining ground. Coalition governments could become the norm across most of our major metros.

But there’s also another troubling finding. More than half of South Africans say no political party represents their views and 68% of registered voters say politicians cannot be trusted. So just ahead of the poll, let’s pull all of this together with Mari Harris from Ipsos.

Mari, let’s start with this, and welcome to you, is the African National Congress then experiencing, in your opinion and from the data, a temporary electoral slump? Or do you think we are witnessing the longer-term collapse of its traditional support base?

MARI HARRIS: Honestly, Jeremy, I think it is the longer-term collapse, because if we look at the results from about 2016, the 2016 local government elections, we can see every time the support for the ANC going down and down.

Now I think it’s just a further chapter in the story.

I don’t think it is imminent, but I think like many liberation movements, the ANC, when they came to power, they did not really have, I think, a working plan for South Africa after 1994.

They achieved liberation, but now it is a little bit like the expression, the dog that caught the car.

If you look at their history over the last 35 years, you can see that the first, few presidencies, Mandela, Mbeki, that went rather well, and they had a lot of legitimacy still and so on, but things started to go down under Jacob Zuma.

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Currently, I think we’re in rather deep trouble if we think about the standard of governance, to put it that way, in the country.

JEREMY MAGGS: Mari Harris, if voters, though, are abandoning the African National Congress, it does beg the question, does it not, why opposition parties are not attracting more or even overwhelming support?

MARI HARRIS: Because people have deep-seated, almost, a part of their blood and their guts that’s attached to the ANC. It’s very, very difficult to abandon the ANC because people grew up with the party. It’s really part of their heritage.

To abandon the party is like being a traitor, or even worse. So people are not flocking to other parties.

They would rather say, look, I’m not going to vote this election, I will sit on the fence and see whether they come right. So unfortunately, my view is that there will still be very low voter participation in this election.

JEREMY MAGGS: Your research goes on to say that over 50% of South Africans, which is an alarmingly large number, feel politically unrepresented. Surely that’s a bigger warning than any party polling numbers?

MARI HARRIS: Yes, I think, and I’ve been watching that for years. That figure has been steadily growing, the number or the proportion of South Africans who feel alienated from politics.

Not only those who say that they can no longer vote for the ANC, but they can also not vote for anybody else, but lots and lots of people do not have a political home.

I think the reason is because people believe that politicians can’t be trusted. They also say that politicians are only interested in their own welfare and in that of their friends, family and their patronage networks.

They do not really participate in politics, or they don’t really try to make normal people’s lives better.

They’re in politics for themselves and not for the citizens of the country.

That’s the one reason. The other reason is that there are more than 600 political parties, as you know, registered with the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission). It is simply too many. There are so many parties, I’ve read through that list of names.

It is absolutely confusing. I don’t have a clue what those parties mean, what they stand for, who their leaders are or what the principles are.

I think a lot of people these days see starting a political party and becoming a councillor somewhere as a means of job creation.

It’s a very harsh thing to say, but it is unfortunately true.

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JEREMY MAGGS: But the risk there is that smaller parties could once again end up exercising political influence, I guess, far beyond their actual electoral support.

MARI HARRIS: You are quite right and we see the effect of that. If you think about how Johannesburg had five mayors in the last five years. Tshwane had four. Ekurhuleni had three.

It is unstable, and not very effective coalitions that govern in that way, and I think it is the reason we are not very adept at forming coalitions, that’s the reason for that.

On the one side, people try and get parties to just push them over that 50% without any regard to the party’s principles, values or anything like that, and without any regard as to whether you can work together with this party in a longer term.

We only have two weeks to put coalitions together, which is very, very little if you think about how long it sometimes takes European countries to put their coalitions together, months.

I know we don’t have that time but the other thing is that I think the coalitions that we put together are done in haste. They are done for short-term gain.

JEREMY MAGGS: Yet 65% of South Africans, according to your data, support coalition government at municipal level. Difficult, surely, to reconcile that with the instability that you have already outlined.

MARI HARRIS: That’s that whole thing of cognitive dissonance that we all deal with, that we can hold two opposing thoughts. I think when you think about your local council, you don’t want one party to govern because then it’s only that party’s patronage network who get tenders, who are part of the in-group.

Whereas if there’s more than one party working together, at least the parties have different abilities. They have different strong points. They can perhaps deliver better services for the normal population.

JEREMY MAGGS: Pollster and political analyst at Ipsos South Africa, Mari Harris, thank you very much indeed.

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