There is an ineluctable rule of politics in developing democratic states: ruling liberation parties tend to grow in influence from election to election and the opposition declines. It holds true in South Africa, where the African National Congress (ANC) rose from about 63% of the electorate to 69% in the first 10 years to 2004.
Bucking the trend of a declining opposition was the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA) — previously the Democratic Party — which rose from 1,7% in 1994 to 12,3% in the 2004 election.
It also snatched a reputable near-15% in the local government election of 2006. On the municipal by-election front, it made an important gain early this year against the Independent Democrats (ID) in Tafelsig, a working-class coloured area on the Cape Flats. The victory added a second prized seat to the DA-led opposition majority running Cape Town, the only metro area controlled by the opposition.
The DA also retained a seat in Paarl in a November by-election that saw the ID declining with both the DA and ANC improving their performance — but it was a nail-biting, 28-vote win for the DA over the ANC.
As a new party that bounced on to the political stage in 2003, Patricia de Lille’s ID — formed as a result of her floor-crossing from the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in Parliament — achieved a worthy 2,02% in the municipal poll this year, somewhat up on its national election performance of 1,7% in 2004, its first electoral contest.
It, too, bucked the law of a declining opposition — albeit it off a small base.
However, the New National Party — previously the National Party, which ruled from 1948 to 1994 and which was a junior partner in the government until 1996 — disappeared from the political scene on the day of the municipal poll this year, when the last party councillors came to the end of their terms of office. Their leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, had already effectively defected to the ANC during floor-crossings in 2005.
Crossing the floor
Floor-crossing — allowed in terms of defection legislation — has dealt body blows against nearly all opposition parties, with the DA losing five parliamentary seats, exactly the required 10% of a caucus required in terms of legislation to allow floor-crossing by MPs.
One of those who helped four black MPs cross to the ANC was Craig Morkel, now having plea-bargained — effectively pleading guilty — to travel fraud. Before he defected, he had been suspended by the DA and could not participate in Parliament, and he would have lost his seat had he stayed. He now leads his own party.
Although the DA supports floor-crossing, it found itself licking its wounds after defections. It has thrown in its lot with other opposition parties that have lost key members, including the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which lost five of its 28 MPs. One of these losses was, ironically, to the DA; the other four to Ziba Jiyane’s new National Democratic Convention (Nadeco).
The latter is a picture-perfect case of electoral failure — having achieved the highest count in its favour of floor-crossings of any opposition party in Parliament. It did not enjoy representation before.
Promising one day that his party would become the national government, Jiyane — a former IFP national chairperson — appeared a promising option for a while. It won 25 seats or 0,35%of the vote in the municipal poll — one ward seat in Newcastle in KwaZulu Natal. But then the party started a war on itself.
Jiyane now looks set to go into oblivion, unable to control the filling of vacancies on party lists and finding his deputy leader calling the party tune. Nadeco’s days on the political stage look limited — especially after its councillors bumped the ANC out of power in a number of KwaZulu-Natal municipalities in favour of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s IFP.
This, in turn, triggered the removal of the IFP from the provincial KwaZulu-Natal government at the end of this year. The IFP had been dominant in that province until the 2004 national election. Its support declined from about 10% nationally to 6,9% in 2004. Buthelezi also lost his Cabinet post that year.
Bleak picture
All this boils down to a bleak overall picture for the opposition.
Tony Leon has signalled that he is to give up the DA leadership in May 2007. There are no obvious leadership figures in waiting apart from Helen Zille, who is somewhat trapped in the position of Cape Town mayor. A leader with a lower profile than Zille could damage the party’s prospects.
De Lille — once viewed as a leading figure — has been engaged in a battle with the DA in 2006, with her personal relations with Zille in particular more than somewhat fraught.
Her personal popularity as an opposition leader, however, according to Markinor, is the highest of opposition leaders. But her party has lost Tafelsig, performed poorly in Paarl — where her slice of the municipal vote halved in the recent by-election — and is mostly off the radar screen outside the Northern and Western Cape, where there are large working-class coloured populations.
Poor financial backing and the threats of floor-crossing — De Lille lost two of her seven MPs in 2005 to the ANC — look set to undermine her base if floor-crossing takes place at municipal level in September 2007.
Although there are signs that the floor-crossing legislation may be done away with next year, chances are that De Lille will lose scores of councillors, including in Cape Town, where her party is the third largest after the DA and ANC. Her controversial decision — despite her public utterances that she would not do so — to back the ANC’s candidate for mayor, Nomaindia Mfeketo, has damaged her reputation as an opposition figure.
So, 2007 is likely to see more of the same. The DA is likely to do well in minority areas of concentration where whites, coloureds and Indians predominate. Its electoral machinery is mighty compared with that of other opposition parties, including the tiny Afrikaner-based Freedom Front Plus, which tries to be as politically ”noisy” as the DA.
But the ANC, which recently won 11 municipal by-elections out of 12 in the country, looks set to dominate any electoral contest in black areas in all nine provinces. It can be sure of picking up scores of opposition councillors if the defection door does indeed open.
The ANC has the added advantage of both a policy conference, from June 27 to 30, and a national conference, from December 16 to 20 2007, to focus national attention on itself. There is nothing more galvanising than a contest for power, and the ANC will elect its own president, deputy president and other top office bearers.
Also, there are signs that the Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Communist Party’s public opposition to many ANC policies will be articulated in a walkout on the ANC. — I-Net Bridge