Two weeks ago KwaZulu-Natal bucked a national trend that saw the ANC lose votes in eight of the nine provinces while still maintaining its overall majority.
Instead, the party managed to build on the 47.47% it garnered in the province in the 2004 general election by reaching 62.94% — a staggering achievement.
In the process of claiming almost 2.2-million votes from a potential 3.5-million who turned up at the polls, traditional enemies, the IFP, were routed.
In comparison to the 1994 elections when the IFP won 41 seats in the provincial legislature with about 1.8-million votes, the party won just more than 780 000 votes — a 22.4% slice also down on the 34.8% it won in 2004.
The IFP’s leadership appeared shell-shocked by the latest results. They sincerely did not envisage doing so badly.
General statements emanating from the party during the election campaign were dismissive of the effect ANC president Jacob Zuma would have on swaying the predominately Zulu rural electorate.
The homeboy factor of Zuma’s “100% Zuluboy” persona was a non-issue according to the party — startlingly disingenuous from past masters at manipulating ethnic mobilisation for more than 30 years.
According to the IFP, ordinary voters were tired of the ANC’s inability to develop — the rural areas especially — and were yearning for speedier, more responsive service delivery.
The electorate would vote on issues rather than identity, we were told, as the IFP’s premier candidate, Zanele Magwaza-Msibi, outlined her plans for the party’s first 100 days in office.
But an analysis of voting patterns in areas to the rural north of the province — traditionally IFP strongholds — suggest otherwise.
Remarkable gains by the ANC on the IFP — some as much as 20% — were achieved through focused service delivery. Added to this is the ANC’s intervention and visibility at grass-roots level on issues affecting communities. In Vryheid, for example, the ANC organised protest marches and called for a transformation of the criminal justice system after farm workers’ complaints of abuse, illegal evictions by farmers and not receiving succor from the courts, the impartiality of which was questioned.
In Vryheid the ANC won 43.89% of the vote compared with 25.02% in 2004. The big loser was the IFP, which saw its electoral share drop from 2004’s 61.87% to 47.56%.
The uMkhanyakude district municipality, which includes areas such as Jozini and Hluhluwe, is KwaZulu-Natal’s poorest and least developed. Infrastructure development in the area has been prioritised and includes the provincial housing department having already spent R500-million providing houses for communities there in the past five years. Another half billion has been earmarked for electricity rollout after the Nondabuya power station was recently secured by government.
In Hluhluwe in 2004 the ANC won 27.31% of the vote compared with the IFP’s 66.77%. In 2009 the IFP’s haul was whittled down to 53.89% by the ANC’s 41.9%
In Jozini the IFP slumped from 74.36% in 2004 to 52.29% in 2009. The big winner was the ANC, which bettered its 2004 tally of 21.32% of the vote by moving up to 45.65%.
All this hard work by both party and government over a protracted period was dovetailed, of course, with the rock’n’roll messiah-from-the-sky deployment of Zuma in these areas. A week before elections Zuma’s campaign diary included both areas.
It was a strategy replicated around the province: service delivery over five years in government coupled with a strong ANC presence on the ground and followed through with a slick election campaign that sought to exploit Zuma’s “Zulu son of the soil” appeal.
The increase in registered voters since 2004 also suggests that many first-time voters in these areas leaned towards the ANC.
The IFP has some serious soul-searching to do. Its election campaign appeared a tatty, aging streetwalker when compared to the ANC’s sassy and spunky belle du jour.
And whatever unaddressed birthing pangs it experienced in modernising, attempting to shed its apartheid baggage and finding a successor to president Mangosuthu Buthelezi has to be resolved honestly and without denialism.
The IFP still controls 32 of the province’s 61 local municipalities and, if there is one lesson to be learned from their long-time rivals, it is that hard work on the ground — whether delivering services or having a sympathetic ear and responding to the travails of the everyman — will win you votes.