Southern Africa Report (Johannesburg)
16 May 2011
analysis
South Africa’s local council elections have become a battle by both main parties to defend their historically political heartlands.
The major challenge to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is in the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan council, centred on Port Elizabeth, where the Xhosa-speaking majority has for most of the past 100 years provided generations of recruits to its ranks – before, during and since its apartheid-era years of illegality. There the deciding factor will be who doesn’t vote rather than who does.
The main opposition party, Helen Zille’s Democratic Alliance (DA), entered the election resolved to smash through its self-imposed racial “glass ceiling” (see SAR Vol 29 No 13) to increase its support among black township voters. But it is finding itself facing a serious – and surprisingly vigorous – challenge for continued control of the Cape Town metropolitan council, the DA’s geographic heartland since wresting it from the ANC in 2006.
The contests in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth are too influenced by factors unique to this year’s election to call with confidence. Cautious projections in both are that the incumbent – the ANC in Port Elizabeth, the DA in Cape Town – will survive, with serious bruising.
In the country’s four other metropolitan councils (Metros) – three of them in Gauteng province, the country’s economic hub – and the 280-odd city, town or district councils beyond the urban metropols, the political playing field is unlikely to change significantly. The election is likely to see further erosion of support for Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s embattled Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in its KwaZulu-Natal heartland; and of the foothold the ANC breakaway Congress of the People (Cope) retains in the Eastern Cape, the Northern Cape and Limpopo.
The Democratic Alliance’s leader Helen Zille launches the opposition’s election campaign in Kliptown in March 2011.
The ANC looks set to lose several councils, particularly in the Western Cape. But these losses will largely be offset by
ANC gains from the IFP, leaving the ANC in control of close to the 251 councils it currently controls.
Probably the most damaging challenge for the ANC has been from within its own ranks, where manoeuvring ahead of the 2012 ANC centenary-year elective party conference has undermined its local council election campaign. The ANC has faced sniping from the margins by Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of its trade union federation ally, Cosatu, who harbours party leadership ambitions; and a potentially damaging short-term backlash against its decision to open its candidate selection process to participation by communities. And there is growing speculation that the extreme budgetary constraints imposed on the elections campaign may have been affected by a desire to weaken party and national president Jacob Zuma, undermining his prospects for securing a second term at next year’s conference.
Since South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 the ANC has developed into a formidable election machine, only once (in 2000) securing less than 60% of the proportional election vote. But the machine creaked into motion late and slowly for this year’s campaign, fuelling speculation that the party is in trouble. Voter dissatisfaction over the ANC’s ability to deliver is undoubtedly high, but its prospects at the polls remain good.
Voter turnout in South African local council elections has, since 1994, been comparatively low – 48% compared to the 70%-plus in national elections. In 2000 the ANC secured 59% (against 22% for the DA). The equivalent 2006 figures were 66% (ANC) and 16% (DA).
While the DA’s drop was partly attributable to the end of its shotgun marriage to the remnants of the National Party (the party which gave the world apartheid), much depends on the size of the stay-away vote.
The DA is projecting that it will at least crack the racial glass ceiling that has restricted its growth in the past. It has traditionally been cast as the party of the white, coloured and Indian racial minorities (about 21% of the population) and been unable to successfully reach out to voters from the black majority (see SAR Vol 29 No 11). It has in the past managed to secure only 2% of the African vote. This year it expects to make further small, but strategically significant, inroads, increasing its African following to around 5%. The DA realised early in its 2011 campaign that its attempt to win African voters by characterising South Africa as a post-racial society was failing, as had previous attempts. It has therefore undertaken a sharp strategic change of campaigning direction, most graphically demonstrated by Zille’s ambitious attempt on 27 April, the anniversary of the country’s first democratic elections, to claim the ANC’s anti-apartheid struggle credentials for her party (see ‘Aluta continua’ marks a DA political makeover elsewhere in this issue).
Claims that the DA will capture wards in the massive Soweto township, in the Johannesburg Metro, reflect this shift. But, at least in this election, the change has come too late to decisively change the outcome in most of the country and particularly in the three Gauteng Metros:
Johannesburg Metro
Johannesburg and surrounding towns (population 3 888 180)
The ANC is virtually certain to retain control of South Africa’s economic capital. It garnered 62,3% of the vote for the Johannesburg Metro council in 2006 and improved on its performance in 2009 national elections. Taking account of the first-past-the-post system for the ward vote, a swing of 12% would be necessary to see it lose its absolute majority. The DA won 27% of the Metro vote in 2006 (and just over 21% in 2009), but has few potential allies with whom to patch together a ruling coalition even if it does manage to eat into the ANC majority.
Johannesburg Metro
ANC Ward 61,91%
ANC PR 62,74%
ANC Overall 62,32%
DA Ward 26,91%
DA PR 27,11%
DA 27,01%
Ekurhuleni Metro
The East Rand industrial complex east of Johannesburg (population 2 724 227)
Here too the ANC’s control is virtually guaranteed, with an 11% swing required to end its majority. Although its 2006 majority was lower than in Johannesburg (61,3%), so too was that of the DA (25,8%). Trade unions are particularly strong in the Metro’s black areas.
Ekurhuleni (East Rand)
ANC Ward 61,40%
ANC PR 61,29%
ANC Overall 61,34%
DA Ward 25,72%
DA PR 25,89%
DA Overall 25,80%
Tshwane Metro
Pretoria and surrounding towns (population 2 345 908)
Tshwane has the lowest level of ANC support of the three Gauteng Metros – 56,4% in 2006, compared to 30,6% for the DA. DA support is drawn primarily from the Metro’s large Afrikaans-speaking communities. Several factors combine to point to the ANC retaining control: it has run an active and extensive campaign under a new and dynamic mayor, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, and has had few of the service delivery crises which have haunted Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. Few other parties have the organisation or presence in the Metro to compete meaningfully with either the ANC or the DA – and thus to be available as potential governing coalition partners to the DA – other than the ethnic Afrikaner Freedom Front Plus, which is unlikely to contribute to eroding support for the ANC.
Tshwane Metro
ANC Ward 55,56%
ANC PR 57,32%
ANC Overall 56,44%
DA Ward 30,54%
DA PR 30,70%
DA Overall 30,62%
eThekwini Metro
KwaZulu-Natal’s major city Durban and surrounding towns and dormitory suburbs (population 3 468 086)
The ANC majority in eThekwini is just 6,4% – it won 56,4% of the vote in 2006. But against this the DA won just 16,5%. Much of the balance is held by the IFP, which is not in a position to take support from the ANC. Buthelezi is facing a major threat to his own Zulu-ethnic support-base from former IFP chairperson Zanele Magwaza-Msibi’s vigorous National Freedom Party challenge for traditionalist Zulu support, also promising to erode support in the IFP’s northern KwaZulu-Natal strongholds. The ANC’s continued control of the Metro thus appears secure.
AllAfrica – All the Time
See more here:
Local Parties Prepare to Defend Political Heartlands Ahead of Elections