The pinched faces of children with foetal alcohol syndrome and the young girls on the streets with babies on their hips tell you much that you need to know about the “northern areas” of Port Elizabeth, not yet called Gqeberha, by its residents.
Life is harsh in these communities, their small, four-roomed houses in neat rows, built long ago when fortunes for “coloureds” were much better. Ravaged by gangs, overrun with crime and consumed by unemployment, these are the people who are crucial factor one in the fight for the Nelson Mandela Bay metro council.
Helen Zille, the DA federal chair, has relocated to the city for the three weeks that are left before the election on November 1. In 2016, the DA narrowly missed an absolute majority and it does not want a repeat of the coalition disasters that followed. It is hoping for outright victory — a tall order — which will depend very much on turning out the northern areas to vote.
The ANC too believes it is in with a shout. While it does not explicitly say so, this is only really possible as part of a coalition. While the black African population is the biggest group in the city with more than half the registered voters — 299,000 out of 583,000 — low voter turnout has been responsible for chronic underperformance. Despite winning more wards than any other party, the ANC achieved only 40.9% of the vote in 2016, an indication of how few people voted in its strongholds.
In the national election in 2019, the ANC got a lift from the Ramaphosa factor, winning a 46.9% share of the vote. Whether that has held firm or whether ANC support has dropped off again over the past two years, is crucial factor number two.
As well as the two big parties that are vying for control of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro council, there is a proliferation of small parties, even more than in previous elections. They too hope to govern by winning kingmaker status and none are too picky about the partner they choose. These dynamics make Nelson Mandela Bay anyone’s race and a messy coalition is the most likely outcome.
This is concerning for the 1.2-million people who live in this metro as the shifting coalitions of the past five years have not been good anyone. The city is in the grip of crippling drought with frequent water outages and days of widespread electricity outages. Illegal dumping is rife and black and coloured areas, which sprawl across vast distances, and the surrounding bush are filthy. Violence and crime are endemic.
While a coalition government is not necessarily a bad thing as it reflects the will of the electorate, the problem in Nelson Mandela Bay over the past five years has been the opportunistic approach of small, kingmaker parties which have unashamedly gone after power, position and access to tenders. That trend looks set to continue.
In 2016, the DA came into power with the help of the UDM, with two seats, and the ACDP and COPE, each with one seat. Two years later they were removed when the UDM switched sides to bring back the ANC together with the EFF, the African Independent Congress and the United Front. One rogue DA councillor — fired immediately after the sitting — also voted with the coalition, so-called “black caucus”. In December 2020, the UDM switched again and put the DA back in charge.
A surprising amount of change has happened since then. The UDM and Cope are hardly visible and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) — a “pro-coloured” party founded in the Western Cape in 2013 — has begun to grow. The DA also has to contend with Patricia de Lille’s party, Good, and another local party, the Northern Alliance, both new additions to the electoral scene in the city.
Elections analyst Dawie Scholtz says he sees three big variables in the Bay, as it is popularly called, which are: whether the DA holds onto coloured support; whether black Africans are mobilised for the ANC; and the differential turnout pattern, which in the 2016 election was the deciding factor.
“In 2019, the DA took 80% of the coloured vote. The huge question is whether they can get it again,” says Scholtz.
The leader of the PA is Marlon Daniels, a tall, strong man with the air of a street fighter about him. Daniels is from the northern suburb of Gelvandale and sits on the council, where the PA holds the one seat it won in 2016.
“We are not anti-black, we are not anti-white, we are pro-coloured. The coloured agenda is on top of the priority list, but there is space for everyone,” says Daniels, who is also national chair of the party founded by former bank robber Gayton McKenzie. An indication of its target audience is its slogan “Ons baiza nie!” a colloquialism unique to coloured townships. In the past year, the PA has won three seats in the Joburg metro in by-elections, a shock upset for the DA. Daniels reckons that he will turn his one seat in the Bay to six this time around.
“Who will we go with? Anyone! Anyone who can give us what we need,” he says.
Daniels drives a hard bargain and has, in the past, turned his back on mayoral executive positions that he deemed did not have sufficient impact. He has never voted with the DA in coalition arrangements and says they are “not people of their word”.
Zille spent a good part of her speech at the party’s manifesto launch discrediting the PA, which she said, stood for the “Pollsmoor Alliance.” The Northern Alliance, she said, were the “not applicables”.
2019’s enthusiasm
The second variable of the election relates to the ANC’s ability to revive the enthusiasm of 2019.
“In 2016 the ANC got 73% of the black African vote. In 2019, they got 78%. That might not sound like a big difference but it can make a huge bump. The question is will they get closer to 78% this time?” says Scholtz.
On his visit to Nelson Mandela Bay last weekend, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa attracted large, enthusiastic audiences in black African and mixed areas. His message that “there has been no delivery here since the ANC was in power” resonated strongly, as those areas feel badly neglected by the DA.
However, the blame for the lack of service delivery lies in many dimensions. Addressing a crowd in the RDP housing neighbourhood of KwaNoxolo, Ramaphosa pointed out the houses, reminding the crowd that they were built by the ANC and little had happened since then. But in 2016, the DA won this largely Xhosa-speaking ward as ANC voters stayed home, angry among other things that the houses were badly built and cracked and broke.
Said resident Noxuzola Sonkwala: “In 2016 people were sitting at home and didn’t vote because of the problems we have with the houses. But even with the DA nothing comes right. The people are coming out in numbers now [to see the ANC] because it is a party that listens to the people.”
The ANC candidate this time around was chosen by the community in a community meeting and not by the ANC. At the time he was not even an ANC member.
“He is a humble person; we chose him,” says Sonkwala.
ANC Eastern Cape chair and premier Oscar Mabunyane says that this is what has given the ANC hope.
“People didn’t vote for other political parties. They didn’t go to vote. Also, on the day in 2016 we had extremely bad weather with IEC tents blowing down,” he says.
In 2016, the Eastern Cape ANC was still suffering from the effects of the COPE breakaway in 2009, which wiped out entire regions of leadership and set many of the churches — the real campaign ground in black African communities — against them.
“We could not speak in the churches but that has changed now,” says Mabunyane.
Cope is no longer a factor in electoral politics with their sole sitting councillor having now joined another party. Its leader in the region, Mkhuseli Jack, left several years ago and has since started a new party along with civil society activists. The Abuntu Integrity Party (AIM) will also contest the November election, says a founder member, Gary Koekemoer, and hopes to “get enough seats to form a coalition with either.” In contrast to most other contesting entities in the Bay, AIM is expressly nonracial.
The UDM, which now holds the deputy mayor position, and the EFF with six seats, are other factors to throw into the mix. The UDM has boldly said that it hopes again to be kingmaker but there is little evidence of either its, or the EFF’s, campaign on the ground.
With three weeks to go, Nelson Mandela Bay is an impossible race to call. It is very likely, though, that a coalition will again be the order of the day.
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