Former President Jacob Zuma greets supporters after voting at Ntolwane Primary School on May 29, 2024, in Nkandla. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
The 2024 national elections have proved successful for Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party. By the time the Mail & Guardian went to print, the party was the largest in KwaZulu-Natal and had already won several seats in parliament.
Even with the majority of votes in the country still to be counted, the MK party, which only came to prominence in December, will consider itself the biggest winner.
Zuma, who once claimed credit for having raised the ANC’s election numbers during his time as its president, has been working to bring its share of the vote below 50% and removing its parliamentary majority for the first time.
At the time of writing, the MK party had 43% of the provincial vote — ahead of the ANC, the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). With 10% of the count complete, the MK party had secured more than twice the ANC’s 21%, while the IFP took 16.8% and the DA 11%.
The EFF, which deployed its secretary general Marshall Dlamini to KwaZulu-Natal ahead of the poll, had dropped to 2%, although the majority of the densely populated urban wards in the province with high numbers of voters still have to be counted.
The results nationally and in KwaZulu-Natal throw both the ANC and the Multi-Party Coalition for South Africa parties into disarray as the IFP-DA coalition appears unlikely to be able to muster the 50% plus one they have been aiming for.
This also means the ANC’s plan that should it dip below 50%, it would form a coalition with its allies in smaller parties, also goes out of the window.
Some ANC veterans have in the past shown an appetite to form a coalition with the DA, but there has been a pushback in the national executive committee (NEC), which is dominated by a younger cohort, who would rather have an EFF-ANC coalition.
Two members of the ANC’s Eastern Cape provincial executive committee (PEC) said President Cyril Ramaphosa’s survival hinged on which coalition route the party took. They said the choices were between an ANC-MK-EFF coalition, or an ANC-DA agreement because no party had gained an outright majority.
“There is already a push here in the Eastern Cape for an early national general council meeting later this year to prepare the removal of Ramaphosa if the president does not resign after the elections,” said one PEC member, who asked to remain anonymous.
A national general council is an ANC midterm national conference, which was expected to be held in June 2025 — three years after the party’s December 2022 elective conference and two years before its next one.
The Eastern Cape was one of Ramaphosa’s staunchest supporters, having helped him to the party presidency at the 2017 and 2022 national conferences. But the provincial structure seems to be turning on him as early indicators point to a sharp electoral decline and fears that Ramaphosa could coalesce with the DA in forming the country’s seventh administration.
Should Ramaphosa push for a DA coalition, that would precipitate his removal as state and party president, another PEC member said.
“The DA will slow down the pace of transformation of the economy. Now, the risk of going into a coalition with the DA will be losing [the ANC] base that is already disgruntled that we are not transforming fast enough,” he said, also asking not to be named.
He added that an ANC coalition with the DA would empower the MK party and EFF, which would tell the ANC base that the party “does not want to change fundamentally”.
A member of the ANC national executive committee said an ANC and DA coalition was the “only viable option” and would drive economic development. The NEC is the ANC’s highest decision-making body between its five-yearly elective conferences.
“The only way to appease the private sector and drive investments into the country would be a DA-ANC coalition,” the member said.
They added that the party’s top seven leaders had “no appetite” to convince the younger cohort in the executive committee to start negotiating with the DA for a national coalition government, but said the broader membership would be amenable to working with the official opposition.
Both DA leader John Steenhuisen and party federal chairperson Helen Zille have told M&G this year that they would enter a coalition with the ANC as a “best worst” option and to prevent the party from forming a government with the MK party and the EFF.
In Gauteng, ANC’s chances of retaining its slim majority look to be over, with early results indicating that the party will dip below 50%.
Insiders with intimate knowledge of the discussions within the ANC say the party’s provincial structures — led by Gauteng chair Panyaza Lesufi — have been clear that it should go into a coalition with the EFF should it lose its majority.
The ANC is already in a coalition with the EFF in Ekurhuleni and the Johannesburg metro, where it removed the DA and its partners after the 2021 local government elections.
The ANC is in a predicament because national leaders — including Ramaphosa, party secretary general Fikile Mbalula and national chairperson Gwede Mantashe — are against a coalition with the EFF.
In a recent interview, Mantashe told Business Day that he would “never accept” EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu as the finance minister, calling the proposal by that party’s leader Julius Malema an “outright formula for looting”.
Last year, the national executive committee proposed that the ANC terminate its coalition with the EFF. At the time, committee member David Makhura, who was charged with reviewing its coalition agreements, said the coalition was damaging to the ANC’s brand.
But when the party addressed this with its provincial structures in Gauteng, Lesufi and his colleagues are said to have made an effective argument for the ANC maintaining the partnership.
“It’s not up for debate. These boys are clear and if it comes to it, we will go into a coalition with the EFF in Gauteng,” said a national executive committee member.
ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile is said to favour this agreement.
The ANC’s biggest headache is bound to come from KwaZulu-Natal where it is likely to see a huge decline.
The M&G understands that the MK party is considering forming a coalition with the IFP to dislodge the ANC from power in the province.
IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa previously told the M&G that it would not entertain a coalition with the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal headed by Bheki Mtolo and Siboniso Duma.
Hlabisa said in April that he had made numerous attempts to get in touch with the ANC in hope of talking about reconciliation — calls that were never answered by the ANC.
“They will be calling us now,” an IFP insider said jokingly.
Although MK party secretary general Sihle Ngubane said no talks on coalitions had taken place with any political party, insiders said Zuma had held discussions with the IFP before announcing that he would endorse the party in December.
Speaking to the M&G at the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s results centre, Ngubane said one of the contributing factors to the MK party gaining momentum was the public’s fatigue with the ANC. The rhetoric of the ANC, coupled with the water and electricity crisis, had paved the way for the MK party, he said.
“We saw these people have no solution to the economy that is falling apart. Actually, our economy is finished but they keep doing PR. We came with solutions to our economy and the other thing — we came with the land,” Ngubane said.
“We want to bring land to the people without compensation and [the] nationalisation of the Reserve Bank. So our people believe that we will do what we say we are going to do. These guys of the ANC, they are finished, all they know is to loot.”
Asked whether the MK party would form a coalition with the IFP, Ngubane said it would form an alliance with anyone.
“We are here [for] politics. We are not here [for] games or rhetoric … We are here for the lives of the people. Anyone who politics with the political ideology of supporting the lives of the poor, the marginalised, the downtrodden, the middle class of our society and the third class structure, we will share with them. People who just come into politics with no ideology, they have no idea if they are coming or going, it will be difficult to go into a coalition with them.”
Ngubane added: “MK is for president Zuma. We all rely on him to lead us in that direction. Whatever direction he leads us to, we will go and humble ourselves and do what is necessary to empower our people.”
IFP spokesperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa said the party had not had any discussions on coalitions since the trends of the elections had begun to emerge. He added that any pronouncement or speculation by people other than the IFP was reckless.
“An NEC meeting sat this morning [Thursday] to receive a briefing from the elections committee and the district coordinators in so far as the collation of results is concerned and that was the only item on the agenda. I think people must really desist from throwing us into public speculation which does not come from us.”
Kwazi Mbanjwa, the MK party’s head of mobilisation in KwaZulu-Natal, expressed confidence that the party could take the province outright without the need for a coalition partner.
“[The results from] the major [voting] stations that we are looking at to increase our numbers are still not in yet,” Mbanjwa said. “We are confident that we will have done even better by the time counting is over.
“When president Zuma launched the party on December 16, the number of people registered to vote jumped from 14 million to 27 million. They had hope that if the party comes through, it will bring change.
“People like myself, who weren’t going to vote and were just going to sit at home on election day had an alternative. We are definitely going to achieve more than 50%.
“We don’t want to discuss coalitions right now. It will depend on the numbers. We will have to sit down and analyse who got what, if it comes to that, but I can assure you it will not come to that,” Mbanjwa added.
The party had also not decided who its premier candidate would be, he said, adding: “It will be known by Monday or so.”
One insider said Zuma’s statement at the MK party’s manifesto rally in Gauteng showed that he never intended to go to parliament.
Addressing his followers Zuma said those who wished to be part of the national executive committee would not become government ministers.
“We can’t all go to parliament. You can’t just assume because you are in the NEC you will go to parliament. There are many responsibilities that await us, not just parliament,” Zuma said.
The result so far also raised hard questions for the DA and the IFP because their collective numbers as the multiparty coalition will not get them a majority in the provincial legislature.
DA KwaZulu-Natal premier candidate Chris Pappas said it was “far too early” to make a call on the provincial outcome and that he was still hopeful that the DA-IFP coalition would secure a majority.
If it did not, he said, the options of either forming a minority coalition government or remaining in the opposition benches were open to the party.
“The turnout has been great, especially the DA strongholds in the bigger urban areas — eThekwini, Umhlathuze, Newcastle — which are taking longer to count and will only filter through later,” Pappas said.
“Assuming this is the end picture, our goal was always to make the partnership work with the IFP.
“There is the possibility of forming a minority government or remaining in opposition. We don’t want power for power sake. John [Steenhuisen]has made it clear that the primary aim was to keep the ANC out of government and to keep an ANC coalition out of government.
“In 1994 we did it. Tony [Leon, the DA’s former leader] said we would rather stay in opposition. Thirty years later we are the largest opposition party and we are still doing our job,” Pappas said.