Nine months, people. Way less than 300 days to the 2024 general election. I have it marked down for the second half of May. That is not much time for the opposition to get its act together.
I long for the election because it will put an end to the speculation, manipulation, scaremongering and posturing we have to endure now. Soon we will know which polls were best and which worst; which parties and leaders the most and least effective.
In the end you have to feel for politicians — whatever they may do, most of their careers will end badly, either at the hands of their opponents or of their own supporters. It is not a life for normal people.
But they command our attention now because our country is in such economic and social trouble. You look in vain for answers. The governing ANC, for the umpteenth time, is doing the same thing that keeps getting us into the mess we’re in — it is going to campaign for more transformation, with its cadres in the money, instead of growth. It will denounce inequality instead of encouraging enterprise and blather on about reducing poverty instead of maximising the private sector role in the economy and the tax revenues collected.
Economic policy
Out of the combined opposition, though, one hears frighteningly little about economic policy. They will also do what they always do, and campaign on the ANC’s poor record in government, on crime, joblessness and corruption. And if they do, the results will also be pretty much the same as they always are. The ANC will win, even if always by a little less than last time, and the opposition will settle back into their groove.
Obviously, parliament has long since burnt down and it is taking a depressingly typical SA age to begin repairing it. But that’s the least of our problems. We are heading for another five years of the same governance that we’ve had for the past 30. What could change it?
DA leader John Steenhuisen did well to get three biggish opposition parties and three smaller and newer ones into his “moonshot pact” ahead of the election. But it is hard to see his group getting beyond 30% of the vote in 2024. He has to expand it. But while the Zulu-centred IFP is in the pact, other black-led parties are not.
Bantu Holomisa has kept his UDM out so far. Kenneth Meshoe has kept his African Christian Democrats out. ActionSA breakaway Bongani Baloyi has kept his foundling, Xiluva, away, and Songezo Zibi, once editor of this newspaper, has declined to engage with Steenhuisen until his Rise Mzansi holds a policy conference in September. Even with them in, under the current electoral tradition the moonshot pact could struggle to get past 35% of the vote.
Something else has to happen, perhaps especially if you believe (which I don’t) the scaremongering about Julius Malema and his EFF making a coalition with the ANC should it not win a parliamentary majority. The myth is that Malema would then negotiate himself into the deputy presidency. I cannot see either President Cyril Ramaphosa or Malema entering into such an agreement.
Change the game
Of course, I don’t know, but it seems to me that the one way to lift this looming election is to radically change the game, and Steenhuisen’s pact has the capacity to do that. The key is to choose a candidate leader, a potential president, now, or at least before the end of the year.
This has to be a black person and, given the society we live in, a man. At the moment the most senior black leader of a political party in the pact is the leader of the IFP, Velenkosini Hlabisa. I know absolutely nothing about him other than that the Freedom Front Plus, a member of the moonshot pact, backs him as the pact’s presidential candidate.
At the moment the pact appears to have decided to wait until parliament first meets after the 2024 election before deciding who to nominate as its presidential candidate. Steenhuisen has wisely made it clear it isn’t going to be him. But waiting until after the election is wrong. If the pact seriously wants to shake the ANC they should put up a presidential candidate to directly challenge Ramaphosa now. The wall of money waiting to fund a new government would light up.
Malema will be running a presidential-style campaign. And whether it is Hlabisa or Zibi or even Holomisa, a direct challenge to Ramaphosa and the ANC by a marketable individual leader is going to have a way bigger impact on the electorate than a bunch of disparate parties thumping their own drums and promising to act in unison after the vote is over.
Perhaps the parties not in the pact might form one of their own, and pact with the pact on who to make president. The deal would be around how a cabinet is formed and what relationship to have with the ANC, which will still be the biggest party.
The person Ramaphosa would least like to go up against is Zibi, but he is playing his cards close to his chest for now. It won’t always be like that. Time to make sure all channels are open.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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