ANC down, Jacob Zuma up after South Africa election

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994, when Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to victory in ending the racist apartheid system.

It would herald the end of the party’s decades-long dominance of South African politics, raise questions about President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership and usher in an era of coalition politics.

Here are three factors that explain how South Africa got to this point, why and what the future will look like.

The ANC was once a respected liberation movement etched in the hearts of South Africans, but after three decades in power it has become synonymous with corruption and poor governance.

As a result, the party was punished in Wednesday’s election, especially as young people turned out in large numbers to vote against the party – something they had never done in previous elections.

“They are tired of corruption and are most affected by unemployment. They are turning on the ANC,” said William Gumede, president of the nonprofit Democracy Works Foundation.

This marks a generational divide in South Africa – their parents remain loyal to the ANC because they lived through apartheid and know first-hand the ANC’s long history as a liberation movement that liberated black people from the shackles of apartheid.

But the ANC’s support among older voters has also declined, including in its rural heartlands.

“The ANC lost support in the big cities a long time ago. Now it is losing support in rural areas too,” Professor Gumede told the BBC.

The ANC reached its electoral peak in 2004, winning 70% of the vote. It has lost 3 or 4 percent of support in every election since, reaching 57 percent in the 2019 poll.

In this election, the vote share appears to have dropped significantly – ranging from 8% to 15%.

Former South African President Zuma, 82, is making a comeback.

He was ousted by the ANC in 2018 over corruption charges, which he denied. His successor is President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Nearly three years later, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for defying a court order investigating corruption during his nine-year presidency.

President Ramaphosa tried to appease Zuma and his angry supporters by releasing him after just three months in prison.

But he may regret the decision as Mr Zuma returns to the political front under the banner of a new party, Spear of the Nation.

Results released so far suggest ANC support is flowing mainly to MK, who are likely to take control of KwaZulu-Natal.

If the final results confirm this, Mr Zuma will become the province’s political leader, giving him a base from which to plot Mr Ramaphosa’s overthrow – his main goal.

His conviction meant he was barred from holding a seat in the National Assembly, but he was still able to pull the strings from behind the scenes.

MK’s growth has been extraordinary. The group was only registered in September last year and Mr Zuma announced his membership in December because he was unable to vote for Ramaphosa’s ANC. Since then, it has shaken up South African politics in a way that no new party has done in such a short time since the end of apartheid.

Paddy Harper, a reporter for South Africa’s Mail and Guardian in KwaZulu-Natal, said MK had not only weakened support for the ANC but also the Radical Economic Freedom Fighters, South Africa’s third-largest political party by far. (EFF) support.

Preliminary results indicate that MK is challenging for the third seat in the National Assembly.

Mr Harper told the BBC that in KwaZulu-Natal, where the party had launched a campaign in the hope of growing there, if current trends continued, , the party’s final vote share may be in single digits.

The EFF and MK advocated similar economic policies, including the expropriation of white-owned land and the nationalization of key economic sectors.

But Mr Zuma has won over supporters of Electronic Sentinel in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal.

He has incorporated Zulu nationalism into his campaign, evoking memories of the country’s founder, King Shaka, on the campaign trail.

The former president also promised to increase the powers of all South Africa’s kings and chiefs, who currently hold ceremonial powers, and to assist the government in delivering development in rural areas where they have influence.

MK’s manifesto promised “the expropriation of all land without compensation and the transfer of ownership to the people under the custody of the state and traditional leaders”.

MK also promoted Mr Zuma’s performance in government, saying the economy had deteriorated under Mr Ramaphosa.

MK’s supporters also criticized Ramaphosa for imposing one of the world’s strictest lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had worsened poverty and unemployment.

South Africa’s respected Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the News24 website predict that the ANC’s final vote share may be around 42%.

If this turns out to be the case, the results would be catastrophic for the ANC and Mr Ramaphosa.

He may come under pressure from within his party to resign, with his deputy Paul Mashatier considered a potential successor.

Ramaphosa’s ANC campaign went nowhere and the party became so desperate that former president Thabo Mbeki and other retired party leaders joined the campaign to boost its vote.

The president is widely seen as weak and indecisive. He defended himself by saying that his focus was on “social compression,” or on building consensus.

“Those who want an authoritarian, risk-taking, reckless president are not going to find that in me.” he said during the campaign.

If the ANC can step in, Ramaphosa’s chances of staying on will be greater The final votes were 45% and 50% respectively.

This was an outcome that many ANC members accepted during the campaign, saying the party could stay in power in alliance with smaller parties such as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which has the support mainly of the KwaZulu-Zulu ethnic group – Natal, or Muslim Jamaat Party.

But if the ANC’s support falls below 45%, it may need a major party as a coalition partner.

This could be the EFF or the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and IFP, which advocate centre-right policies such as increased privatization and the abolition of the minimum wage.

Support for the DA appears to have increased in this election, with the party regaining the votes of whites who supported right-wing parties in the last election, as well as the votes of some blacks who feel they need to be given a chance in national government.

Any coalition agreement at the national level will be affected by what happens in the provinces, particularly the most populous KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, home to Johannesburg and Pretoria.

The ANC could propose a deal to the DA and IFP that would see the three parties govern together at the national level and in KwaZulu-Natal.

“The DA and IFP have retained this option to keep the EFF and MK out of government,” Mr Harper said.

Another option for the ANC is to try to form a coalition with the central government and the Electronic Freedom Forces in Gauteng, where the ANC would also lose its outright majority.

Gauteng’s ANC leaders, backed by Mr Mashatile, are said to be leaning towards an alliance with the Electronic Front.

Mr Malema, the former ANC youth leader, is apparently open to the idea.

Earlier this month, journalist Ferial Haffajee wrote on South Africa’s Daily Maverick news website that the EFF leader had previously been found guilty of hate speech for singing the anti-apartheid song “Shoot the Boers.” [a reference to white farmers] – was “more thoughtful and less angry” during the campaign, a sentiment he expressed at a town hall meeting in April: European Frontline’s natural alliance partner is the African National Congress.

“Even if the business community and markets are spooked by the ANC-EFF alliance, its potential is clearly front and center in Malema’s strategy for entering the Union Buildings [the seat of government]”, Ms. Khafaji wrote.

“Parts of the ANC support an alliance with the Electronic Freedom Army. At the same time, Ramaphosa’s supporters in the ANC believe that such an alliance would bring an existential crisis to the culture of the old liberation movement,” she added.

The ANC therefore faces a tough decision as South Africa enters a new era of elections in which the opposition has the power to form or dissolve a government.