It is often remarked how significant it is that the DA keeps failing to attract black voters. A measly 4% of black people who cast their votes in last year’s election did so for the DA, compared to the 90% who voted either for the ANC, the EFF or MK party
Less often remarked is how significant it is that the DA has so resoundingly captured the votes of racial minorities. I would argue that this one fact is the most important feature of SA’s political landscape, and will shape the country’s future.
Before explaining why, let us start with the numbers. Just less than 82% of white people who voted did so for the DA. For Indians and coloureds the figures are 65% and 47% respectively. It is not often appreciated what an unlikely achievement this is in an electoral system like SA’s.
The most salient feature of low-threshold proportional representation systems is that they reward small parties with niche constituencies. Parties that aim to represent only coloured rural voters, for argument’s sake, or just Afrikaans-speaking whites, theoretically stand a good chance to flourish.
The system is rigged to make it hard for a single party to command majority support across racial minorities, since the incentives for minnows to nibble incessantly at that support are huge.
This has happened to some extent. The PA, a party that appeals largely to poor and working-class coloured people, has eaten somewhat into the DA’s support. But the DA’s hegemony over racial minorities holds.
My point is that it should not be taken for granted that a single party will command the support of racial minorities. It is in fact an unlikely outcome of SA’s electoral system. And the knowledge of how to retain that support, while never certain, is now coded into the party’s DNA.
Why does this matter to SA as a whole? Mainly because a centrist party that commands about a quarter of the vote over multiple election cycles is the most stable fixture in an otherwise liquid landscape. And that in turn provides a ballast for SA politics, narrowing down the country’s possible futures.
To clarify: black politics has never been more liquid. MK party appeared from nowhere to grab 14% of the vote last May. Just four months later its support in opinion polls had almost dropped into single digits. The ANC’s vote share collapsed to 40% in May, then surged to 45% later the same year. Black politics is boiling like molten lava. It has never been remotely like this before.
That in the midst of the drama there is a large, centrist party on the landscape, and that it is going nowhere, is hugely important, since forces on the centre-left in black politics will always face the same choice. Either govern with the DA from the centre and try to run the country well enough to diminish the populist forces on its flanks, or take a leap of faith and govern with the populists.
However, if the latter experiment goes off the rails, as it most likely would, the DA will be waiting in the centre to work with black allies who wish to press reset and start mending their battered country again. Those will always be the two alternatives.
That this ballast party — reliably centrist, its 20%–30% support more or less secure — relies so heavily on the votes of racial minorities is unfortunate and extremely limiting. But that such a party exists at all, albeit in imperfect form, is a blessing for a country like SA.
Just think about it. It is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Life has been getting worse for most people for the last 15 years. Such a country should manufacture anger and resentment on an industrial scale.
For such a country to possess a centrist party that has nailed down a quarter of the vote is a game-changer. It gives SA a degree of political stability that a country with its vast and cascading problems could scarcely hope for.
• Steinberg teaches at Yale University’s Council on African Studies.
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