Mashupye Herbert Maserumule looks at what the local government elections revealed about the ANC's future.
The August 3 municipal polls consigned the governing ANC to the opposition benches in some municipalities, including the major urban areas.
This makes 2016 a defining year in the history of the country’s electoral politics.
Beyond being political rituals with prescribed rites overseen by the Electoral Commission (IEC), “elections decide politics”. There is more to them than just casting a vote.
After two decades of political dominance, the ANC’s electoral performance came down to its lowest since it became the governing party.
But is the party unravelling? This is the question it takes into the new year.
To many, an answer is writ large. But is it, really?
I ask this question because despite its weakened position it still managed to garner more than 50% support, with the main opposition DA trailing at 26.9% and the EFF at 8.19%.
Statistically, a 27% margin of variation is too wide to disentangle the dominant party equilibrium.
The ANC is still ahead of many other parties. Because of this some argue a dominant party system is still intact, implying the party’s political hegemony is not unravelling.
That the ANC is statistically ahead electorally is true, especially on the basis of its aggregate electoral performance. But electoral dominance does not equal political hegemony. This is because where there are a “small number of large parties” and patron-based “large number of small parties” electoral statistics often mask the truth.
As neo-Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci explains: Hegemony belongs to those who enjoy the greatest ideological resonance in society.
Hegemony is therefore a function of the ability to galvanise a following based on political acumen to map social reality and create “collective conscience”.
Does the ANC’s 53.91% aggregate voter support in the municipal polls imply this?
The percentage obfuscates a dismal showing in metropolitan areas, “home to some 40% of the population” as well as the majority of young black middle-class professionals.
But most people in this constituency straddle urban and rural areas. Their following of a party is not necessarily based on historical affinities, but the logic of ideas in sync with their epoch.
This urban-based strata of voters influences the countryside voters, who depend on the former for their subsistence. In this relationship there is the power to influence.
The black urbanites with rural connections – largely educated and perhaps with the streaks of sophistication – wittingly or unwittingly impart their political choices in their interactions with the countryside. These influence voter behaviour. The countryside vote is not entirely a reliable pillar for political longevity.
The ANC’s support in the urban areas is declining. That its performance is propped up largely by the rural vote may be a harbinger for its atrophy. In the illusion of the ANC’s invincibility based on the rural support, its president appears to want it to be a rural party, mocking the black middle class as “clever blacks”.
ANC supporters at the launch of its local government election manifesto has pernicious implications. It is at odds with the historical foundation of the ANC as an urban-based party. Compounding matters is its rural support is declining. Over time, its sanctuary in the rural vote is going to vanish.
Doesn’t this make the black middle class a strategic bet to reclaim political hegemony and longevity?
Elections are important in many ways. As US political scientist Murray Edelman explains: "(They) give people a chance to express discontents and enthusiasm, to enjoy a sense of involvement (in the democratic process), (to) draw attention to common social ties and to the importance and apparent reasonableness of accepting public policies that are adopted."
All these are necessary to consolidate democracy. The urban voters are particularly important to this end. Largely, they are not voting fodder. Their participation in elections is not ritualistic. It is a means to optimise accountability, to change the behaviour of those charged with the responsibility of managing public affairs.
A political party with strategic foresight consolidates urban support to incubate its ideological posture for electoral virility. Ideological resonance is measured by the extent to which the enlightened subscribe to a party’s system of ideas. This is important to ensure that, in Marx and Engels words: The ruling material force in society is at the same its intellectual force.
Political hegemony is created and maintained this way. With the abstention of the black middle class, especially in urban areas, does the ANC still command political hegemony? Or has it become a ruling class without hegemony?
In Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, coalition arrangements had to be structured because there were no outright winners. This spawned minority governments. There is at least a silver lining in this.
The ANC’s loss does not necessarily mean opposition parties performed better. Much as they appear to have made inroads into the support base of the ANC, in the main, voter abstention accounted for its diminishing electoral prospects.
The voters did not necessarily abandon it. They just withheld their vote. Their gripe is about corruption, factionalism and slate politics.
If former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report is anything to go by, state resources are being siphoned through state contracts, where the preoccupation is to profit from the state.
Venality creates the opportunity for state resources to be used to quench the insatiable lust for vanity, especially of the political elites, while those lower are kept perpetually hoping for a better life.
State resources are misappropriated for the personal aggrandisement of the political elites. Consequently, their personalities overshadow the party. Members become “members of members” rather of the party. Loyalties are due to the personalities.
These developments have estranged the black middle class. Hence their abstention in the recent municipal polls. But that they mostly decided not to vote rather than switch allegiances, is an indication of their understanding of the distinction between the personal behaviour of individuals in leadership positions of the party and the noble principles at the historical foundation of the ANC.
This is an opportunity for organisational self-correction. But it is not going to be easy. The rot goes deep. Leadership of epic ethical proportions, absolutely unblemished, is required to salvage the ANC.
The jury is still out on whether the ANC veterans’ sigh of wisdom in calling for President Jacob Zuma to resign, and the recent gesticulation by veterans of its armed wing, will salvage this desperate epoch of its history. – The Conversation
* Maserumule is professor of public affairs, Tshwane University of Technology.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.