By all accounts, it is common knowledge that the April election is a foregone conclusion with the African National Congress set to win again, most likely with an increased majority.
From analysts to opinion polls, there is wide consensus. The issue of contention in South African electoral politics since 1994 has always been what percentage of the vote the ANC will achieve and how the opposition will fare.
To the extent that the ANC will continue to dominate South African politics in the foreseeable future, there has not been any electoral contest since 1994.
Predictably and understandably, this raises the ire of opposition parties, especially the main opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance and Inkatha Freedom Party.
After all, they don’t want to be seen to be cheering the ANC by conceding this point. But without realising it, they are propping up the ANC in power.
This is asserted by the curious fact that they have very low opinions of themselves and have literally conceded defeat even before the elections start.
The DA — in alliance with the IFP — hopes at best to win 30% of the vote. And by any standards, this is a depressing ambition from an alliance comprising the two main opposition parties.
The immediate aim of the DA is to position itself as “an alternative government or government in waiting” and just how long the party is going to be content to be in this position is not clear.
The Independent Democrats is talking of winning a paltry 5% of the vote, and the New National Party’s ambitions are even lower and it is pinning its hopes on the ANC.
The United Democratic Movement’s leader, Bantu Holomisa, in his own words, aims at his party being among the “top three” after the election — yet another startling assertion of lack of self-confidence.
It is only the Pan Africanist Congress that harbours lofty ambitions in this regard. It has announced that it has two million supporters in the Eastern Cape alone. However, the PAC’s past electoral record seriously cautions us to be very skeptical about such claims.
What is happening in South Africa is unique. Opposition parties are in the election race, at best to maintain their existing power and at worst to ward off total oblivion.
Thus, we should seriously empathise with the South African voter. Opposition parties are weakening democracy by unashamedly conceding that they are not interested in challenging the ANC. In the process, they are seriously demeaning the worth of the vote.
It is therefore not amiss to ask: why should voters support them when by their own admission they have no plans to dislodge the ANC from power?
Where they seem to be very effective is in destroying one another — which is exactly what happened with the near-annihilation of the NNP by the DA in 1999.
And deplorably, recent media reports indicate that they are already starting to snipe at each other instead of challenging the ANC.
This attitude is quite intriguing given their lofty promises. What is baffling is how they are ever going to put these polices into practice when they don’t see themselves as wrestling power away from the ANC and becoming the government.
Strangely enough — despite their bitter complaints that the ANC is becoming too powerful — opposition parties are the main architects and authors of this outcome.
This is especially so with regard to the DA, the official opposition. What the party and arguably most South Africans do not realise, is that the DA and especially Tony Leon, its leader, are the greatest aides of the ANC.
The best thing that ever happened to the ANC in a post-apartheid South Africa, in terms of increasing its support, is the formation of the DA.
Despite public spats between the two, the ANC is gleeful about the policies of the DA and has it exactly where it wants it to be.
As long as the DA continues to espouse polices that are hostile to the black majority — through combative and belligerent leaders like Leon, and especially against the working class — the ANC’s dominance is assured.
For the reality of South African politics is that no political party will ever rule this country if its economic policies are antagonistic to the black majority, especially workers.
And it is palpable fiction to maintain that mundane palliatives like the basic income grant, advocated by the DA, are alternative economic strategies.
Black voters fear the DA’s core economic message: the conservative, rightwing policies that will target them first, if ever the party wins power.
Thus, South Africa continues to be a land of “miracles”. The ruling ANC is more seriously worried about its own supporters, who may abstain from the ballot box and weaken its power, than it is about opposition parties.
And in this regard, it is ably assisted by those opposition parties.
Dr Thabisi Hoeane is a lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University Grahamstown. He contributes regularly to national print media. His PhD was on South African Electoral Studies and Democratisation.