2024 Election: Winds of change as opposition gains ground

The Electoral Commission of SA has announced with what one hopes is justifiable fanfare – no running out of ink, losing ballot papers or opening polls late and closing them early – that it’s geared up and ready for next year’s general election.

Opposition party leaders, who have learnt over three decades to survive on the fumes of faint hopes, are full of cocky talk of this being a “watershed”, “turning point”, “last chance”, and of a government in “deep trouble”.

A well-timed poll of registered voters conducted by The Brenthurst Foundation and SABI Strategy gives some support for the thesis that, at last, the times may be a-changing.

Over the past year, there has been a pronounced swing away from the ANC to the advantage of the loose coalition of opposition parties and groups that is gathered under the Multi-Party Charter (MPC) umbrella.

Much has been made of the headline finding that 41% intend to vote ANC (down from 48% a year ago), putting the MPC at 36% (up from 34%).

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The MPC is neck-to-neck with the ANC in Gauteng (37% each) and dwarfs it in KwaZulu-Natal (46% to 32%) and the Western Cape (58% to 22%).

These figures set the scene for a hard-contested election that could see the ANC humiliated nationally for the first time. Given that the poll’s margin of error is 3%, this may be a very close election.

On the other hand, the positives should be set against the powerful performance in the poll of the Economic Freedom Party (EFF) – six points up at 17% of the vote – as well as the potential fragility of the MPC coalition.

The MPC is not a gathering of equals. It is dominated by the Democratic Alliance (DA), with all the baggage of voter prejudice regarding supposed “whiteness” that this brings.

Fully two-thirds of the MPC potential vote in 2024 comes from the DA (23%), with the next biggest party, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) garnering the next most (7%).

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The contributions of ActionSA (ASA) at 3% and Freedom Front Plus (FF+) at 2%, as well as all the others combined at 4%, are critical to the MPC’s success but proportionately negligible, meaning that big political egos like ASA’s Herman Mashaba are sure to chaff.

Nor can the MPC easily solve the problem of DA domination and whiteness by finding a more acceptable public face. Well, not unless they could get President Cyril Ramaphosa on board.

Although our beaming and avuncular president has slid in the favourability ratings, he nevertheless achieved only nett positive score (after offsetting favourability and unfavourability scores) of +2%.

The also-rans to Ramaphosa are the DA’s John Steenhuisen at -8%, Helen Zille at -7%, and Mashaba at -11%.

The EFF’s Julius Malema is the least popular, with a nett score of -17%.

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Steenhuisen, however, has the last laugh. When asked who should lead the MPC, Steenhuisen at 29% was more than twice as preferred as Mashaba (14%) and Hlabisa (13%).

Whatever hopes the poll might have fanned in opposition circles, these should be tempered with the awareness that there remains a powerful tendency towards inertia in the South African body politic.

Despite 57% saying that the ANC is most responsible for the state the country is in – only 5% blame racism or apartheid and 2% blame the DA – it is hard to shake existing tribal loyalties in voting patterns.

There are two key takeaways for opposition parties and their supporters. The first is that the MPC, preferably enlarged, is the only route to electoral victory. Second, they need a leader who can inspire voters to take a momentous step – to move from merely despising the ANC to actually casting a ballot against it.