ANC voters have a blind spot

After three decades, the accumulated evidence is pretty much incontrovertible: the ANC has failed South Africa.

The opposition knows this and proclaims it loudly. The government knows this and, on occasion, even publicly admits it.

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The only poor fool yet to take the truth on board is the average ANC voter who, no matter how dissatisfied they are, just can’t seem to bring themselves to vote for another party.

Such voter masochism is remarkable.

Not only has the quality of life, by virtually every development index, worsened, but the warnings of imminent state collapse voiced by the corporate sector, investors, international agencies and even ANC luminaries like Kgalema Motlanthe, have been persistent.

Despite these warnings, voters have just dug their heads deeper into the sand. Either they have not registered as voters; or, if they registered, they have not voted; or, if they voted, they have not voted for centre-right parties.

The move among ANC voters from enthusiastic support to disillusioned abstention is statistically stark.

In the 1999 general election, in a country of 46 million people, Thabo Mbeki’s ANC got 10.6 million of the 16 million valid votes cast.

In 2009, the election that brought Jacob Zuma to the helm, the ANC got 11.6 million of 17.7 million valid votes.

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And in 2014, despite the scandals, he still drew 11.4 million of 18.6 million votes.

In contrast, by 2019, Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC drew only 10 million of 17.4 million votes cast. For liberal parties there is scant comfort in these historical trends.

New voters, when they turn out, have gravitated to the populist left, to the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

In 1999, about 5.3 million people voted for opposition parties, with the DA (then called the Democratic Party) and the New National Party (the old National Party with a new logo) together getting 2.6 million. In 2014, the DA hit its high est vote of 4.1 million and the EFF got 1.2 million.

In 2019, the DA was down to 3.6 million – despite the almost 50% increase in population since 1999 – and the EFF was up to 1.9 million. But wait, it gets worse.

The gap between the populists and the liberals is predicted to narrow further, with the grim prospect of the EFF becoming the biggest single opposition party.

An aggregate of the opinion surveys over the past month put the DA at 20.5% of the vote (and falling) and the EFF nipping at its heels with 19.6% (and rising).

In these surveys, the ANC clocks in at 40.5%. Add the EFF vote and the centre-left is back to a very comfortable majority of about 60%.

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The other parties who have joined the DA in the Multi-Party Charter (MPC), contribute small but critical numbers: 4.9% from the Inkatha Freedom Party, 4.3% from Action SA, 2.1% from Freedom Front Plus and 1% from the African Christian Democratic Party.

That potentially gives the MPC a third of the vote. Of course, as the pollsters keep reminding us, surveys are merely snapshots of sentiment at the moment.

Trends are only trends until they reach an inflexion point. Nothing in life is set in stone.

It’s still unclear, for example, how much damage the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK) will do to the ANC, if it overcomes the obstacles placed in its way to election participation.

On the other hand, if the MPC can attract even just a small percentage of that disenchanted ANC vote, this will have a big effect on the opposition front’s performance.

It’s this ANC elite that holds the key. Judging simply by the fact that it took 46 years – and a unique combination of pressure and opportunity – for the faithful of the old National Party to desert it, it may be too early to realistically expect ANC voters to change allegiance.

One thing is certain, though, South Africa can’t afford to wait 46 years for such an epiphany.