JONNY STEINBERG: SA’s electoral system enforces voting along racial lines

There is a case to be made that the fate of the DA will determine the future of politics in SA, for if the last election results portend the future, the DA is the only vehicle likely to break historical patterns of voting. The question is whether SA’s electoral system will allow the DA, or any other party for that matter, ever to play this role.

The election came dispiritingly close to resembling a racial census. Nine out of 10 black voters chose the ANC or its populist offshoots. Eight out of 10 white voters chose the DA. Three decades into democracy, the task of getting significant proportions of black and white South Africans to vote for the same party remains elusive.

Who is likely to be the first to succeed? Not start-up parties. Rise Mzansi, ActionSA and Build One SA did miserably and it is hard to imagine any of them doing substantially better next time. Either an old party rooted in history will do it, or none will. It will not be the ANC, unless it renews itself in ways that seem improbable. That essentially leaves the DA. What are its chances? 

SA’s electoral system makes the job hard. Getting large numbers of different people to vote for the same party is a task of aggregation; you convince people with diverse interests and identities that they belong together, at the ballot box at least. But low-threshold proportional representation (PR) systems like SA’s throw serious obstacles into the path of any project of aggregation. This is because they unduly reward small parties for picking off the constituent elements of the parties that are trying to aggregate. 

So, for instance, if the DA has any hope of increasing its black vote share, it will have to address a host of questions that trigger deep concern in its white and coloured constituencies, such as employment equity and the racial composition of the ownership of capital. But for every move it makes in this direction, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) are there to pick off white and coloured voters. It is money for jam for them. It is what they can and must do. They do it on autopilot.

There is a lot of hand-wringing about how white the DA’s leadership is and how tone deaf it is to black sensitivities. This is obviously true. But it is seldom asked whether this is a symptom, not the cause, of the problem. The DA is disciplined by the electoral system to behave this way; when it is more adventurous — in the leaders it chooses, in policy, in imagination — it is punished by the erosion of support among its core constituencies.

The rules of the game are stacked heavily against the aggregators. The only way they can beat the game is with sheer charisma — with a leader or, better still, a phalanx of leaders with the talent to communicate their way out of the straitjacket the electoral system has made. For it is hard to see black and white people voting en masse for the same party without a pied piper who plays them the most enchanting tune. Needless to say, the DA’s current leader can barely play in key.

Does the DA have a communication genius waiting in the wings? It is a tall ask. First-rate political talent does not grow on trees. But without it, the power of SA’s electoral system will drive the country to its future. The DA will dig in its heels and remain a successful party of minorities, its share of the black vote somewhere around 5%. As the ANC declines, it will lose further vote share to the populist left. SA’s politics will more and more resemble a racial war.

Meanwhile, voter participation, already staggeringly low, will shrink further as greater numbers of South Africans don’t see a home for themselves in any existing party. Pundits will complain that it is the parties’ fault. Actually, it is the fault of the low-threshold PR electoral system. Its darkest secret is that it fails to create parties for which people actually want to vote. 

• Steinberg teaches at Yale University’s Council on African Studies.