SA’s pivotal election unlikely to shift ANC’s course

It’s apparently going to be pivotal. Aside from any anxiety South Africans have about next week’s general election, that it will be pivotal to the country is the pre-election consensus of an array of foreign news organisations.

Well, as one says in Afrikaans, ja-nee. Yes and no. Yes, the election is pivotal in that for the first time in three decades, the power of the ANC will face some checks.

It almost certainly will have to do deals with other parties to be allowed to function as a minority government and may even have to enter into coalitions.

However, that’s not necessarily pivotal to the way that the new government will function over the next five years.

There will be no substantial pivot towards political and economic pragmatism. There will be no less appetite for social engineering. There will be no slowing in turning our backs on a Western world view based on broadly Judea-Christian values.

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All the signals are that the majority of the populace broadly agrees with the course that has been set, though it may not agree with who exactly will be at the helm.

Over three decades, the centre-right parties have never at a national level garnered much more than a third of the vote. And the ANC, when one adds in the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), has never had under two-thirds.

Radical change is not on the cards for 29 May. The opinion poll consensus is that the ANC will get less than 50% but won’t be obliterated.

Similarly, the creaky Multi-Party Coalition, of which the Democratic Alliance at about 24% is the mainstay, may grow marginally.

The greatest political ferment has been on the left, with the addition of Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party being the yeast to get the left-of-centre witches’ brew bubbling.

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Either of the EFF and MK – predicted together to be in the vicinity of 20% – could be in a coalition with the ANC to deliver to President Cyril Ramaphosa the majority he needs.

Although both stress their radical credentials, both broke from the ANC on issues of personality rather than policy. Unfortunately, Zuma and Julius Malema loathe Ramaphosa and would demand his head as the price of any deal.

If the ANC wants to keep Ramaphosa, the party may try to survive as a minority government. That’s a tricky manoeuvre – it could involve temporary alliances on key issues both on the left and on the right – through a combination of persuasion, threats and promises of reward.

While this would usher in a period of instability and uncertainty, none of these scenarios involves the ANC having to abandon its ruinous policies.

If anything, because the ANC is losing support mostly on the left, unless the election upends all the opinion poll predictions the next ANC government will not only continue but possibly accelerate SA’s decline.

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Ramaphosa has quietly proved to be our most quietly ideological president yet.

Expropriation without compensation, stricter racial quotas in employment, more cadre deployment and the destructive ideological rigidities baked into the NHI are all the handiwork of the president that the business community and, most of the media, lauded as a social democrat pragmatist.

Abroad, while a true commitment to multi-polar diplomacy might benefit South Africa, Ramaphosa’s foreign policy is only nominally non-aligned.

Aside from the ANC’s ideological embrace of the likes of Cuba, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, its new close friends – none of which, except for China, is among the top 10 countries investing in or trading with South Africa – are mostly a rag-bag of reprobates that includes Iran and Russia.

Those who believe in a mixed economy, social justice-oriented democracy that is inclusive of racial minorities and Western liberal values should brace for disappointment. No pivot. Just a straight line tilting downwards.

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