Moeletsi Mbeki says ANC losing its majority was expected, SA not in crisis

Last week’s general election did not mark a watershed moment in South Africa, according to political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki.

Mbeki was speaking at the PSG Think Big Series on navigating change in the aftermath of the election this week. South African went to the polls in 29 May 2024.

“The election was not a watershed election if we use the criterion of the ANC losing its majority. The watershed election was actually the local government election in November 2021 when the ANC got 45.6% of the national vote. We knew already that the ANC was not going to get a majority,” he said.

Capitalist society vs. race-based society

Mbeki noted how South Africa is not in a crisis. He says the new government needs to scrap black economic empowerment legislation as it leads to corruption and inefficiency.

“We are what is called a capitalist society that puts the interests of the social groups or social classes first. However, we South Africans do not understand how a capitalist society works because we have lived for hundreds of years with a race-based society.

“We no longer live in a society where race is the determinant of what happens. It is socioeconomic interests that decide. We have to get out of the mindset that race is a determining factor on how our society works. Socioeconomic interests determine at the end of the day how our government works, who is the government, whose interests government and the ruling party represents,” he said.

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Mbeki said the ANC represents the interests of the African middle class and has said so, which is why its primary policy is black economic empowerment – to empower the black middle class.

“We have seen in local government that parties looking to govern by forging unity out of diversity tend to fragment when they are confronted by a fundamental political or economic crisis. What we have seen play out at local government level certainly did not bolster any confidence in terms of where things stand now if we do venture into what is anticipated to be very focused coalition talks.”

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Asked about the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party getting many votes based on ethnicity, Mbeki cautioned against the use of labels.

“South Africans like labels because that is what someone who is lazy to think does. He puts a label on things and then he thinks that issue has been thoroughly analysed.

“The reality is that the ANC has been losing support, primarily from the black working class in the metros who were voting for the ANC before. However, since the local government elections of 2016, the ANC has been losing the support of the black working class in the metros.

“What kept it afloat is the rural vote in the former homelands. If you label the MK party as an ethnic party and think you have understood the phenomenon, that is childish. People have to study who voted for MK.”

Lessons from local government

Mbeki said the coalitions at municipal level have been a good lesson for us, but they are not the whole lesson. “The stakes are high. At municipal level, the stakes are low. At national level, the stakes are very high. You do not expect the same behaviour at national level where you have very high stakes. There is a limit to what we can learn from coalitions at municipal level.”

He pointed out that the Constitution does not stipulate the number of votes needed to elect the new president.

“All it stipulates is that members of parliament must meet and elect a president. It does not say that the president must be elected from the party with 51% of the votes. It just says members of parliament must meet and elect a president.”

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The top five parties in the country are all middle class parties advancing the interest of the middle classes to the exclusion of all the other social groups in society, Mbeki said. “That is what causes instability in South Africa. What is causing instability is that other groups in society feel that their interests are not represented in decision making.

“Black workers do not feel that their interests are represented. White capitalists do not feel represented. The poor do not feel they are represented.”

What must change and what must be a priority?

Asked what must change and what must be the priority, Mbeki pointed out that South Africa is not off track. “The DA makes propaganda that South Africa needs to be rescued. Yes, the railways are not working. Eskom is not working although government now says it is working.

“What the ANC has done is it brought a crisis in our society. It mismanaged the railway system, it mismanaged the electricity supply system, it disincentivised entrepreneurship by its policies of black economic empowerment. But that does not mean the country is in crisis and needs to be rescued as Mr Steenhuisen says.”

A future-focused government

How can the new government balance the interests of groups? He says we do not elect a new government. “Citizens do not vote to address the past. They elect government to create a better future. The ANC is focusing on the past and that is one of its problems. That is why voters will start to abandon it.

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“We need a government that is going to build a better future that will not solve the past. You cannot solve the past. The past happened. They must build an economy to employ all the able-bodied people who want to work. That is what I want to hear.”

South Africa’s expensive public service

He also said that one of the issues not discussed besides having the most unequal society and the highest unemployment in the world, is that we also have the most expensive public service. “An OECD study showed that the public service salary was more than 14% of GDP. This means we take resources from our economy through the tax system and give phenomenal high salaries to public servants. Government itself revealed it has 55 000 public servants earning more that R1 million per year.”

He says government cannot then say it has no money to invest in our education system, railways, road maintenance or railway infrastructure. “Whether the ANC is in coalition, if the public service remains so enormously expensive, South Africa is going nowhere. We have to cut the cost of the public service by half if our economy is to go forward.”