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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
First the election, now the haggling. After 30 years in which the African National Congress has been the undisputed party of government in South Africa, the country now looks set to enter a period of turbulent coalition politics.
With almost 50 per cent of the vote counted, the ANC was on 42.9 per cent with the main opposition Democratic Alliance on 23.4 per cent. Even if the ANC creeps up a bit and the DA edges down, for the ruling party it is a long way from the 50 per cent-plus promised just a few days ago by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Whatever the precise result when all the votes are counted, South Africa’s electorate has delivered a verdict that implies the ANC alone cannot be trusted to deliver the dividends of democracy. Years of low growth, high unemployment, poor service delivery and corrosive corruption have seen to that.
The ANC may still be able to govern pretty much as normal if it can draft in smaller parties that won’t ask too much in return for a seat at the table (or a snout in the trough). But the fact that, a day after voting, it is unclear whether the ANC may need the support of parties to its right or to its left shows just how confused South Africa’s election map has become.
If the ANC chooses to govern alongside the DA, a right-of-centre party, it will be expected to shift towards more market-orientated policies, alienating its own left flank. If, on the other hand, it aligns with the leftwing Economic Freedom Fighters, a pact that would unnerve markets, the price would be a more radical redistributive agenda. That too could precipitate a split and a further realignment of politics.
The most likely prospect remains that the ANC will lean on a plethora of smaller parties, allowing it to bumble along. But even this, less dramatic, outcome does not disguise the fact that several things have changed for good.
Most obviously, politics has fragmented, the consequence in part of a political system of proportional representation that affords even small parties a chance of having a say in parliament. Around 50 parties and several independent candidates were on the national ballot, offering a dizzying array of choice.
Some parties, including Rise Mzansi, a vehicle for former newspaper editor Songezo Zibi, and Build One South Africa, led by former DA leader Mmusi Maimane, appear to be establishing a presence on the electoral map in order to build voter recognition for 2029, when the prospect of the first non-ANC government is real.
Perhaps even more significant is the nature of that fragmentation, much of it along identity lines. The uMkhonto weSizwe party of Jacob Zuma, which draws heavily on the Zulu vote, together with the Inkatha Freedom party, the traditional Zulu party, look set to push the ANC out of power in KwaZulu-Natal, the country’s second-most populous province.
Other parties campaigning on ethnic lines include the Patriotic Alliance, which targets the so-called coloured vote, and the Freedom Front Plus, an extreme right party that is almost exclusively white. Even the ANC, once the symbol of a “rainbow nation”, has increasingly become the party of the Black majority.
The third and related trend is the tendency for politics to vacate the centre ground as parties seek to appeal to segments of the electorate. This in a country that, say political analysts, for all its turbulent and divisive history, has produced an electorate that largely eschews radicalism. Still, some parties have pushed more populist agendas, including shipping young pregnant mothers to Robben island.
These trends look certain to dominate the next parliamentary term at least.
One thing that is less clear, however, is who will be president over that period. If the ANC blames Ramaphosa for its disappointing result, it could yet punish him by backing a rival, most likely his deputy Paul Mashatile. This may not happen immediately but if it does, removing the charismatic, albeit ineffective, Ramaphosa is not an obvious recipe for improving the ANC’s electoral prospects.
This is not the end of the road for the ANC. But its era of dominance is over.