Between August 2016 and November 2017 an
additional 9% of the registered electorate stopped voting. You may find
this unbelievable, but this is exactly what happened in Metsimaholo
Municipality’s November 2017 by-elections. Remember that these encompassed the
entire municipality, not just one or two Wards, effectively representing a
complete rerun of the August 2016 Local Government election. Apples with apples
comparisons are therefore appropriate and very revealing.
I believe Metsimaholo can be viewed as a microcosm of
the national electorate’s disposition, because as explained below, if any
municipality should have expected a higher turnout than before, it is
Metsimaholo.
Without going into too much detail - in 2016 there
was no outright winner in the Free State municipality of Mestimaholo, but the DA
managed to cobble together a 23 vs 19 coalition “majority” enabling it to take
control, albeit for less than 12 months. Internal squabbling saw the coalition unsurprisingly
fall apart and having failed to pass the 2017/18 municipal budget, the council
was necessarily dissolved. Free State Provincial Government appointed an
administrator to oversee operations until by-elections could be held to re-constitute
a political order for the municipality. In
these circumstance, shouldn’t we expect more people to turn out to ensure a
majority for the party of their choice, thereby helping to alter the previous
disastrous outcome?
The reality of these by-elections is that registered
voter turnout dropped from 56% in 2016 to 47% in 2017 making the non-voting
population the largest constituency at 53% of registered voters. Significantly,
as you will see later, the number of voters casting ballots in each of the two
elections dropped by a massive 18.5%.
Apples with
Apples Analyses
Much has been made of the ANC’s “collapse”, where
results superficially suggested an almost 35% drop in support - but what needs
to be factored into this equation is that the SACP stood in these by-elections
under their own banner for the first time, and not as an ANC alliance
supporter. If, for apples with apples comparison, we add the 2017 SACP votes and
ANC votes together, the seats won remains the same and in the same
configuration. The DA came out worse off with 1 PR seat less (let that sink in
for a while), and the EFF remained static:
- 2016 ANC/SACP alliance: 16 Ward and 3 PR = 19 seats
- 2017 ANC: 16 Ward and 0 PR + SACP : 3 PR = 19 seats
- 2016 DA: 5 Ward and 7 PR = 12 seats/2017: 5 Ward and 6 PR = 11 seats
- 2016/17 EFF: 8 PR seats
A classic example of the adage the more things change, the more they stay the same except for the
DA?
Most significantly, both the DA and EFF also
received far fewer votes in 2017 than in 2016, so any talk of “improvement” in their
performance is disingenuous. They both fared worse than before except perhaps
in comparison to each other, which is really no recommendation.
Talking
Coalitions
Far from solving the 2016 problem, these
by-election results have again produced a most unfavourable outcome, so it is
back to the pain of coalition politics for Metsimaholo residents. They have my
profound sympathy, particularly as it will require some very strange and
fundamentally incompatible bedfellows to take control.
Trying to predict who is going to do what, with
whom, and for how much in the Mesimaholo coalition stakes remains a Chinese
puzzle until we know the outcome of the ANC’s December National Convention
leadership elections. In my opinion, if
Ramaphosa wins the leadership race, the Tripartite Alliance of the
ANC/SACP/Cosatu will remain intact, but if Dlamini-Zuma wins I believe that at
least the SACP and Cosatu will split completely from the ANC, if not also
Ramaphosa and his supporters.
As fluid as the situation is, bear with me for a
moment while I speculate on the fate of Metsimaholo’s coalition circus. If the
ANC/SACP alliance holds together they will have 19 of the 42 available seats,
and if the DA/EFF co-operative alliance holds together they will also have 19 of
the 42 available seats. Under these conditions, Metsimaholo citizens will again
be at the mercy of 4 minority parties that hold 1 proportional seat each, one being
awarded to a party that attracted only 405 voters, or less than 0.48% of all registered
voters (just saying) - so if you thought we had rid ourselves of minority
governance, think again. In this scenario, rational thinking says go straight
back into administration and forget the unworkable coalition nonsense.
If the ANC alliance fails because of a Dlamini-Zuma
victory in December, an alternative scenario for Metsimaholo is that the DA,
EFF and SACP form a coalition that will provide them with a majority of 22 of
the 42 available seats. As I already believe that DA/EFF coalitions are a
marriage made in hell, adding the SACP to this poisonous cocktail really would
mean the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
2019 Indicators
In my opinion, the real message from Metsimaholo is
that too many people are choosing not to vote because they have lost faith in
the existing party-centric political dispensation, and have come to believe
that none of the existing parties are able to deliver their promised “better
life for all”. The failure of politicians to entice voters back to the ballot
box should send a clear message to their parties that they are on the wrong
track, and are missing the point that no matter who is in control, there are
too many of them eating our lunch, and not enough them putting food on our
table.
One of the party leaders must explain why a voter
who can’t afford an airline ticket should be concerned with the plight of SAA? Or
why an indigent household which receives free electricity and water should be
concerned about the evident corruption at Eskom and the Department of Water
Affairs? Party leaders grandstanding on
the so-called “big” issues are missing the biggest issue of all, which is that fewer
and fewer people at grassroots level care about, or believe in, anything they say.
They are talking to the wrong people about the wrong things.
Scarily, if this downward slide in voter turnout
continues into 2019, we are in danger of having a National Government not elected
by the will of the majority, but elected by a mobilised minority. We cannot allow this to happen, so ways must
be found to reawaken public enthusiasm for the ballot box.
I have written before that I think it will take a
new political party to break the mould of traditional South African politics. A
party that will commit to returning power to the electorate and deliver
practical and pragmatic policies defined at a local level, not the present “one
size fits all” centralised policies of the established parties.
Makhozi Khoza, leading the new ADeC party, is best
positioned to exploit the paradigm shift needed to change our political
landscape, but to do this she must shed the mantle of a traditional South
African politician, which means she must stop criticising what others have done
or cannot do and focus on what can be done, and how to do it. She mustn’t tell us about how she will fix
National problems at a National level, or how corrupt the ANC is, or how
extreme the EFF is, she must tell us how she will use National power to change
people’s lives at a local level. It would also not hurt her to look at how
Emmanuel Macron convinced France to trust his 14 months old party.
If a new party cannot live up to the challenge,
then we can only hope that Cyril Ramaphosa wins the December ANC leadership
election, dropkicks JZ into touch at the first opportunity, and proceeds to
unravel the tangled web of the Captured State that we live in.
A final footnote to this sad tale is that PR seat
calculations reveal the ANC were only entitled to 14 seats. This calls into
question the veracity of Demarcation Board decisions, and dictates that they revisit
the demarcation of Metsimaholo with a degree of urgency to avoid any
accusations of gerrymandering.
