The most hotly contested local government elections in a while are now over and all the political parties are putting their own spin on what has been a bruising contest for them all.
The relatively high turnout was impressive, given the trends in previous local government elections. It shows that South Africans have not lost their appetite for politics and are prepared to queue for long hours to make a statement about how they are governed.
Far from disillusionment, the turnout shows that citizens want their voices heard. This bodes well for the future as it means councillors and other elected public representatives should know that the people cherish the opportunity to assess and pronounce on their time in office.
Not surprisingly turnout has been low in areas that have experienced service delivery protests, such as Mpumalanga where residents expressed their loss of faith in the electoral process to impact their lives fundamentally.
Also remarkable is that voting patterns have defied most speculation and expectations: the Democratic Alliance was confident of taking away Port Elizabeth from the ANC (it sent its leader Helen Zille there four times just before the polls), yet voters nonetheless chose the ANC; the ANC smelt victory after it nominated Western Cape Cosatu leader Tony Ehrenreich as Cape Town mayoral candidate, yet voters emphatically preferred the DA, giving it an outright majority for the first time; the Congress of the People was expected to be completely wiped out, yet it showed that it still had some legs.
But there are still signs that the majority of the population is beginning to prefer bigger parties with a national foothold as the small parties, bereft of resources, continue to struggle. This poses a challenge to these parties to rethink their strategies instead of routinely taking part in elections where they just make up the numbers. This does not necessarily mean closing shop, but adjusting themselves so that they remain relevant in a hostile environment for them.
The real lesson is for the bigger parties which somehow feel entitled to the votes of certain classes or races they believe they represent. The crude statements by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema that people should not vote DA because it is a party for whites are symptomatic of what is still wrong with our politics. Malema has become known for these kinds of careless statements, but his view is shared by many in his party, which unfortunately implies that theirs is not the non-racial party of Nelson Mandela, but a party for blacks. That we still vote largely along racial lines is true, but it is a direct result of the country’s apartheid past and should not be used to further polarise our society.
The DA worked hard to portray itself as a non-racial party, even repeatedly invoking itself as the party that best represents the rainbow nation of Nelson Mandela. But it will have to do more to speak genuinely to the interests of black South Africans. Beyond the elections it will have to pronounce itself on affirmative action, employment equity, job creation and other issues that indicate how it balances its strong representation of minorities with the genuine interests of the black masses to which it is appealing.
The results have shown that voters who have not traditionally voted DA are slowly beginning to take interest in its message. This means that while speaking to the good governance of Cape Town, the DA should also be saying that the building of unenclosed toilets in Khayelitsha was an aberration rather than what the DA believes township dwellers deserve. It is not enough to say the ANC also did the same in Vijoenskroon. The DA must heed its own message from its internal analysis five years ago: “One good way of assessing where a party’s heart really lies is to ask the question, ‘What makes the people in this party angry?'” was what DA strategist Ryan Coetzee asked then.
“I submit that the DA’s anger attaches to things like crime, corruption, discrimination against minorities and name changes, but not to racism against blacks, the state of education, unemployment or poverty. If that division provides some insight into what we care about, then what does it say about who we care about?”
“If we are going to become a party that is attractive to South Africans of all races, then we need to find a way to do two things: first, care as deeply about the ‘delivery issues’ that affect black South Africans as we do about those that affect whites; second, find a way to bridge the racial divide on ‘identity issues’,” Coetzee said.
As for the ANC, the lessons are obvious; the time to play racial politics is gradually coming to an end. The people are starting to assess them on the basis of their delivery records rather than only liberation history. They will have to do much more to convince South Africans to stay with them than blame the media for their ills.
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