LUKE SINWELL | Voters still want ANC in power, but a different ANC

For the first time in SA’s 30 years of democracy, the ANC failed to obtain a majority of votes. In this context, political questions regarding possible coalitions have become paramount.

Those who support unfettered market freedom fear the ANC will partner with the left-leaning EFF and the newly minted MK Party, led by former president Jacob Zuma. However, a partnership with the DA — the historically white party — is perhaps the greatest threat to those seeking redress of past injustices.

The latter would crush existing hopes for redistribution of wealth and cement the misguided sense that we live in a “post-racial” world. We are consistently asked about the most “market-friendly” coalition, but one must ask: for whom?

Those at the top or the bottom? In 2023, Stats SA found that 18.2-million people experience extreme poverty — it is very unlikely that the trickle-down theory will work to their advantage. The party which came to power on the back of the liberation movement against apartheid promised “a better life for all” in 1994.

The reconstruction and development programme was intended as a state-driven policy to improve the lives of the black majority, but the 1996 “class project” adopted under the leadership of former president Thabo Mbeki rolled back the state. Neoliberalism became ANC policy. Despite this, white capital surged as SA was able to re-enter the global economy, and yet the working class experienced increased levels of poverty and unemployment.

There are a few black diamond billionaires who benefited from BEE, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, but this doesn’t sit well with the vast majority of poor people, many of whom understandably feel as if they have been forgotten.

Disgruntled with what he viewed as the ANC’s flawed decision to oust Thabo Mbeki before his term could expire in April 2009 in favour of Zuma, Terror Lekota and others formed the first breakaway party called Congress of the People (COPE) in 2008. Following the Marikana massacre on August 16, 2012, Julius Malema launched his party in 2013.

The EFF spoke the language of the people, wearing mineworkers’ hats and red overalls. The “red berets”, though, have arguably been most effective on university campuses where it heads most student representative councils (SRCs), thus reaffirming that the party has a strong base from which to flourish. Zuma, meanwhile, is seen by many as a “man of the people”, and yet his nine years of “state capture” from 2009 to 2018 when he was the president, cost the country about R500bn.

A self-described socialist, at the end of 2017 he introduced a programme of “radical economic transformation” which was supposedly aimed at redistributing resources to the poor and working class. When Zuma was sentenced to jail in 2021 after refusing to testify at the Zondo Commission to answer questions regarding charges of corruption and cronyism, protests and riots flared in KZN and to some parts of Gauteng, leaving more than 300 people dead and costing R20billion in damages.

The ANC’s legal attacks against Zuma seemed to have turned him into a kind of messiah, but he is a false messiah. Ramaphosa, on the other hand, promised an end to corruption and a “new dawn”, but what we got was a new darkness. Our lights have literally been shut off, often on a daily basis, not only in poor communities, but the middle class and big business has also been hit.

Even water runs dry in the suburbs. Excessive inflation rates as well as high loan premiums for housing bonds means that the middle class too has been drowning. One might suggest that the vast majority of voters still want the ANC in power, but a different ANC — and perhaps even one that nationalises mines and banks as is written in the manifestos of both MK and the EFF.

The MK Party claims in its manifesto to be committed to radical redistribution and to be run by the will of the people, but the experience of Zuma suggests this is mainly rhetoric. There are strong indications that the MK party is conservative on other grounds as well. Earlier this year, for example, Zuma addressed 3,000 MK Party supporters whereby he opposed same-sex marriage which he has previously referred to as a “disgrace to the nation and to god.”

In part as a response to rising calls for nationalisation, capital attempted to promote a new party, Rise Mzansi, but it failed only capturing less than one half a percent of the votes in the elections despite the funding it was given by one of the richest families in SA, the Oppenheimer’s.

One concern is that political enthusiasts and party leaders do not necessarily know what the people are thinking. But the assumption that because people voted, their voices have been heard is shortsighted and dangerous terrain for those who seek fundamental social change.

What is required is a deeper, more robust democracy, not one where people vote every five years and then sit back in the hope that the new configuration of power within parliament will hand us down some crumbs to make our lives slightly better.

What is clear is that the rules, norms and boundaries within which decisions are made at the ballot box must be reimagined on the terms of the people themselves. Without this, elected officials merely pledge to break attractive promises.

Sinwell is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Johannesburg. He writes in his personal capacity.