It is now clearer than ever that what the ANC does this month will decide whether it wins a majority in 2019. If it does not produce leaders and behaviours that win back voter trust and make its alliance partners comfortable, it is likely to sink below 50%.
This was signalled by last week’s by-elections, in particular that at Metsimaholo. Like everything else that happens in our politics, they were met by position-taking and point-scoring that ignored the important message they sent.
Once voters who have supported a party for decades kick the habit, they may never return
An almost unnoticed by-election result was that in Umlalazi, KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC lost a ward to the Inkatha Freedom Party in a significant swing. This confirms an IFP revival that has been evident for a while. Since the KwaZulu-Natal vote has been a key ANC strength in the last two national elections, this must worry a governing party that won only about 54% of the vote in 2016. It continues a pattern in which the ANC is failing to win the large margins it once racked up in rural areas, and means that it can no longer rely on these votes to cancel out losses in the cities.
Metsimaholo, whose core is Sasolburg, confirmed that the ANC continues to lose ground in industrial areas. Its supporters boast that it won more seats than any other party. They are blind to the fact that, if it repeats this result in the 2019 national elections, it will be forced into a coalition or opposition. It won only 35% of the vote, down 10 percentage points from 2016. One analyst calculates that its share of the township vote has halved since 2011 and is now below 50%, which means it is bleeding in its urban heartland.
On one level, this result is not quite the disaster it seems, for most of the ANC votes were lost to the SACP, fighting its first-ever election on its own. The SACP polled 8.7%, so the ANC lost only 1.3 percentage points to other parties. The SACP’s decision to contest elections does not mean it plans to leave the alliance. In other democracies, alliance partners contest elections separately and work together: it seems to want this sort of alliance. So, as long as the alliance continues, the votes the ANC loses to the SACP will probably not keep it out of government.
The SACP’s bargaining power in the alliance has just increased markedly
But the ANC can hardly afford complacency. Once voters who have supported a party for decades kick the habit, they may never return. Voters who supported the SACP this time have probably never voted for any party other than the ANC. Now that they have taken the plunge, they may not vote ANC again unless they feel that it has changed significantly.
The SACP’s bargaining power in the alliance has just increased markedly. Newspaper headlines proclaiming gleefully that it "flopped" in Metsimaholo owe far more to factional wishful thinking than reality. If it can repeat this result — achieved with only weeks of campaigning — nationally, it would win more than 30 seats and would do better than the EFF in 2014. It is hard to see how 6% then was a "triumph" but over 8% is a "flop" now. More important, if it does win 8% or more, it could deprive the ANC of a majority and ensure that the two would have to govern in coalition. Metsimaholo may, therefore, mean that the ANC needs the SACP if it wants to govern after the next election.
These realities suggest that the ANC’s choice of leadership now may decide whether it governs in future.
If the outcome alienates the SACP and its trade union allies, this could deprive the ANC of the votes it needs for a majority. And if the leaders it chooses cannot persuade voters in rural areas and medium-sized industrial towns, let alone those in big cities, that it deserves their trust, a majority in 2019 is unlikely. To do that it needs less tired "radical" rhetoric that no one believes any longer, and a far greater willingness to show that its leaders care more about voters than themselves.
As long as election rules allow opposition parties a major role, fraud is improbable
All of this assumes that we will have a fair election in 2019. Many question this: the thought of the ANC losing its majority seems to defy belief so much that it is common to claim that it will find some way to manipulate the result.
Metsimaholo showed why this is highly unlikely. Opposition parties loudly insisted that electoral officials stick to the rules: while they have not demanded a rerun, they did not need to — if there were any irregularities, they were not enough to stop the severe bleeding of ANC votes. It is safe to assume that if the result was affected unfairly, they would have challenged the election (the DA may challenge the allocation of seats). As long as election rules allow opposition parties a major role, fraud is improbable.
All of which suggests that this ANC conference will be the first ever that could win or lose it the next election and decide whether its long run as sole governing party continues.
• Friedman is research professor in the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.
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