Ivor Powell and Wonder Hlongwa report back on KwaZulu-Natal election results
Election politics will give way in KwaZulu- Natal to political horse-trading as the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party look for political advantage in an election battle that went right to the wire.
By the time the Mail & Guardian went to press it was still impossible to call the result with any certainty.
But the narrowness of the margin between the two parties has implications. The winning party will not have an absolute majority and will have to confront the sobering reality that it can govern effectively only in partnership with the other.
Late yesterday afternoon, after a long seesawing battle of numbers, the IFP was about 3 000 votes ahead of its arch-rival and sometime mortal enemy. But only 60% of the votes in the province had been counted by that point, and results for around 300 polling stations in the Durban metropole, notably from the sprawling townships of Umlazi and KwaMashu, were still outstanding.
However, so were results from IFP-dominated areas in northern KwaZulu-Natal and the South Coast.
In short, though there will be a victor, neither side will have really won in KwaZulu- Natal.
With the Democratic Party emerging as an intriguing dark horse in the provincial contest – registering around 10% of the provincial vote -it could hold the balance of power, with the two major parties seeking to form a coalition government.
But this is more of a theoretical than a real possibility. The ANC and IFP have worked together in a government of provincial unity in the past, and it is almost certain that they will be looking to accommodate each other and cobble together a cabinet between them.
This is particularly true for the IFP. With the ANC winning a national landslide, it will be in a position of some disadvantage unless it can make an accommodation in KwaZulu- Natal.
But the road to rapprochement could be rocky. After the ascent to the premiership of former national arts and culture minister Lionel Mtshali, already strained relations between the IFP and the ANC in the provincial legislature worsened dramatically.
Ahead of elections the KwaZulu-Natal legislature was unable to sit without dissolving into chaos and walkouts for a single day in 1999.
And while there was certainly a good deal of electioneering in the wars of words that arose, there was also genuinely bad blood – which has grown worse as the government has moved to isolate perceived IFP warlords like legislator Philip Powell and Chief Kalalakubo Khawula in the wake of investigations by the Directorate of Public Prosecutions.
But win or lose, there will be messages in the vote for the IFP. One is a positive message. The IFP has confounded election polls and pundits like Idasa Markinor which put its support in KwaZulu-Natal 20% lower than elections have shown it to be.
At the same time the party has lost around 11% of its provincial support. The ANC, while it has failed to live up to pollsters’ predictions, has nevertheless edged up by nearly 10%.
The ANC appears to have made some inroads into the IFP’s rural heartland. Campaigning under the escort of about 200 soldiers and police at the former no-go area of Nongoma two weeks ago appears to have borne some fruit. The ANC gained a surprising 38% of the vote in the area.
The ANC has also made major inroads into parts of the South Coast formerly considered absolutely safe to the IFP.