South Africa Poised for a Historic Shift: How the 2024 Election Challenges ANC-rule
For three decades the African National Congress (ANC), once led by Nelson Mandela, has governed South Africa. For much of this time, the party could count on the unwavering loyalty its supporters: Even when the socio-economic development of the country stalled or its Presidents faced crises, the ANC’s grip on power remained steady. With a historic election in May and a series of challenges ahead, 2024 might be the year that this political reality finally starts to crack.
South Africa finds itself in uncharted waters as its people contemplate a future without one of the few constants of the post-apartheid order, a dominant African National Congress (ANC). For three decades, the party’s electoral dominance and abundance of social capital, which came with being Africa’s oldest liberation movement, combined to make it a force that permeated almost all facets of the country’s public life. The general elections on May 29, in which the ANC for the first time since 1994 lost its overall majority, changed all of this. Probably for good.
The 2024 edition of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), which examines the developments in South Africa up to January 2023, pointed to a number of public opinion polls that already raised the spectre of a result below 50 % for the ruling party. Referencing the impact of grand corruption on the state’s capacity to manage its public finances and, therefore by extension, its ability to govern effectively, the Index noted growing discontent among citizens. Amid ineffective growth, high unemployment, and growing levels of poverty, South Africans have over the past decade steadily lost faith in the once celebrated liberation movement turned ruling party. The extent of its fall from grace, however, surprised most.
The end of a triumphal era
At 40 %, the ANC’s final election result, came in at the lower end of projections cited in the 2024 BTI, and marked a 14% decline from its previous margin in 2019. The official opposition, the centre right Democratic Alliance (DA) result remained stagnant at 22%, while the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) saw a 1% decline from 11% to 10%. The newly-formed Umkhonto we Sizwe Party of former President Jacob Zuma was the biggest winner in these elections, managing to garner 15% of the vote and overnight becoming the third largest party in parliament. Although locating itself to the left of the ANC, the party lacks a coherent policy platform and largely relies on the charisma of Zuma in the KwaZulu-Natal province, where it received close to 80% of its votes.
This result obliterated some of the foundational assumptions that shaped the realm of possibility of South Africa’s political landscape over the past 30 years. So tight was the ANC’s grip on power and its ability to frame the national discourse that opposition parties, but also key societal role players in business, labour, and civil society had little choice but to orient themselves to the positions that the party took. For some, it meant developing an identity cast in relation to the party or factions within it. For all intents and purposes, its domination of South African politics was complete and as the lines between party and state increasingly blurred over the past decade and a half, the ANC became the centre of South African politics. As a result, some have asked whether the centre can hold in the absence of a dominant ANC.
Instability on the horizon
In the short term, the answer still appears to be “yes”. In spite of the damage that state capture has inflicted on the capacity of the executive and legislative arms of the state, they still function, albeit far from optimally, in executing their respective mandates. As the latest BTI country report on South Africa confirms, the rule of law, underpinned by an independent judiciary, remains supreme; the National Treasury continues to be cautious in the face of populist pressure inside and outside of the ruling party; and an independent Reserve Bank has maintained its resolute stance in protecting the country’s currency. Courage can also be taken from the grace with which the ANC, still the largest party in parliament, accepted a devastating election outcome as a fair reflection of the will of the South African people. These are necessary conditions for a stable transition towards a consolidated democracy.
Over the longer term, however, a steady centre is not guaranteed. It will require focus and commitment to keep things together. Over the past decade and a half, the key metrics for the intractable, interrelated challenges of poverty, inequality, and unemployment, have all been decreasing. And as they did, pressure mounted on all arms of the state to respond in their respective ways to the desperation of a majority of South Africans. As recent rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey have shown, a majority of South Africans seem to believe that they are failing to do so. What is more, close to two-thirds have indicated that they are generally unhappy with the way in which the democratic system responds to their needs. A further erosion in trust towards the country’s governance fundamentals can, therefore, be expected should the state fail to halt the country’s socio-economic decline. This will have a profound impact on the country’s strategic outlook in the short to medium term.
Reforms, growth, unity: the challenges ahead
In light of this, the development of a cohesive economic strategy for inclusive growth will have to be at the centre of the efforts of the new Government of National Unity (GNU) that was formed in the wake of the election. While the idea of a GNU has been broadly welcomed as a noble response at a time when the country remains deeply divided along racial and economic lines, a marriage of convenience between ten parties with diverse constituencies also poses obstacles for the achievement of consensus. As such, the country’s political landscape is bound to be messy, with inevitable bouts of uncertainty and volatility in the coming months. With local government elections in 2026 looming on the horizon, parties to the GNU should, however, have an incentive to create an enabling environment for reform to take root.
Much will depend on the maturity of these same parties to understand the opportunity that the current moment presents, as their predecessors did in 1994, when the country made its transition to democratic rule. Can they rise above the acrimonious, polarising posturing, devoid of policy substance, that for decades has come at the expense of the most vulnerable? Are they able to articulate a shared vision that will provide the stability needed to set the country back on a path to prosperity? Their recent track records suggest not. But South Africa has defied the odds before.
