Stefaans Brmmer
As South Africa’s lilliputian opposition parties scramble to block the African National Congress juggernaut, one of the country’s most influential think-tanks believes the ANC may still secure a two- thirds majority in next year’s election.
The Centre for Policy Studies has challenged predictions that the ruling party will get below 50% of the vote, arguing that the ANC has picked up support since its 62,7% score in the 1994 general elections.
“Survey results have been incorrectly contextualised. The ANC has gained rather than lost support, and may well achieve a two-thirds majority in next year’s general election,” the centre says in a report. It estimates the ANC’s support has risen two percentage points.
The Sunday Times reported last weekend that a Markinor poll pegged ANC support at only 54%, almost nine percentage points down on its 1994 showing. This would dash the ruling party’s hopes of securing a two-thirds majority, which would enable it to rewrite the Constitution.
The centre says commentators have incorrectly interpreted data from recent opinion polls on an increase in undecided or apathetic voters. It says such an increase does not mean the major parties will lose a corresponding portion of the vote.
Louise Slack, political analyst at the centre, adjusted the results from the 1994 polls to reflect support as a percentage of total voter population – which is the standard used in opinion polls – rather than as a percentage of total valid votes cast.
Using this new set of figures – a comparison of like with like – the opinion-poll results show an increase of about two points for the ANC.
Slack’s research shows that if 1994’s figures are correctly adjusted, the National Party has lost five percentage points to 12,5% of the vote and the Inkatha Freedom Party 4,6 points to 4,5%, while the Democratic Party has gained one percentage point to 2,5%. Markinor’s poll this month suggests DP support has climbed more, to 5%.
Sticking to a comparison with “adjusted” 1994 figures, Slack also did a breakdown of provincial voting patterns.
She says the data suggests the ANC has made strong gains in Mpumalanga (72,7% according to the Institute for a Democratic South Africa last year, versus 68,9% in 1994); the Western Cape (39,2% vs 29,3%) and KwaZulu-Natal (38% vs 25,7%).
But the party is slipping slightly in the Northern Province (75,3% vs 77%) and in Gauteng (48,9% vs 49,7%). And it is falling more rapidly in the Northern Cape (29,5% vs 45,7%), the North West province (64,8% vs 74,3%) and the Eastern Cape (56,9% vs 77,2%).
This means the election hotspots are likely to be the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape, as well as KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. In some instances a change of provincial government is likely.
Slack told the Mail & Guardian opinion polls are generally unreliable in South Africa – even more so in the run-up to elections. Again, that could mean ANC popularity has been underestimated, she says.
“There is an element of bias coming in. A lot of the surveys are run by middle- class professional people who believe the ANC is not delivering, whereas poorer black people have seen, for example, electricity delivery.”
She says an alliance of opposition parties – which has topped the political agenda this week – could make inroads into ANC support, but this would hardly be significant. There could be a slight drift from the upper echelons of ANC support to such an alliance, but it would offer no political home to the bulk of the ANC support base.
University of Cape Town political scientist David Welsh agrees: “An alliance will appeal to voters who would in any case have voted for one of the parties in the alliance, so a net gain is unlikely.” But indirectly, the ANC could feel the sting if resources otherwise spent on opposition infighting were to be directed exclusively against the ANC.
Welsh says an alliance would not be easy in the making: if the DP and the NP ganged up, they would have the appearance of a “white bloc”, while teaming up with the IFP might well be the “kiss of death” to partners. The United Democratic Movement might bring some credibility to an alliance, but its support appears “patchy”.
NP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk – reeling from polls showing his party’s support as low as half that of 1994 levels, as well as from a string of local government by-election defeats – this week made his strongest overtures yet to other opposition parties.
He pleaded for a pooling of “time, energy and money” against the ANC and said it should be “under one banner” – dropping his earlier insistence that the NP should lead the opposition charge.
But the DP played hard to get, saying the NP’s concessions were being made because it was running scared. A well-placed DP official told the M&G his party had not yet discussed the NP shift, but remarked: “We are the only party that everyone else wants to get together with.”
He insisted an alliance would gel only around shared values: “If something [is created] merely to oppose the ANC, it will lack the punch to take on the ANC.”
The official said the DP would, in principle, have no problem with losing its own identity – a condition the UDM is setting for its own participation in an opposition alliance.
UDM co-leader Bantu Holomisa said his party could not afford to get into bed with parties carrying apartheid baggage, but all existing opposition parties should disband to form a single new movement.
There were no great remaining policy differences in South Africa, which means the country could be best served by a two- party system where delivery is what counts most, he added.