THE EDITED VERSION OF THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY TIMES ONLINE OF 21 May 2024.
The battle for South African voters has been fought on the streets, stadiums, social media, and all other platforms. Pacts and coalitions against the governing party were formed and announced. New political parties entered and exited the contest. South Africa is now dealing with institutional readiness to deliver one of its consequential national and provincial elections. The debate is now about the functionality of the democratic order and how it affords society the uninterrupted right to elect representatives freely.
The main contestants are
the governing ANC, the DA, the EFF, the IFP, ActionSA, and the new kid on the
block MK Party. How these parties perform in these elections will determine whether
South Africa gets to a coalition arrangement. That the ANC will get the
majority of all votes is not in question; what was at issue was how to reduce
its performance to less than 50%. All political party funding models were
designed to achieve this outcome, a context reflective of the growing trust
deficit between the economic establishment and the governing party.
The decline of the ANC
and DA has, for a while, been a function of voter turnout in their traditional
constituencies more than an outright voter preference change. In the same vein,
the impact of voter turnout decline has been the numerical growth of the EFF
and ActionSA. This might be answering the question of where the new voters,
disgruntled middle class, unemployed youth, and a significant number of foreign
nationals with RSA IDs will go on the 29th of May. The new, majority
youth, if you like, Tintswalo vote, is an unknown most political parties have
been working on. If there are any surprises in this round of elections, they
will be from the youth and young adult voters, who have been AWOL for the past
rounds of elections.
The Coloured, Indian,
and White vote has also undergone significant changes. The growth of the
Freedom Front indicates a resurgence of the 'laager' outside the DA and a
consolidation of Afrikaner voter power to enable a better coordinated
in-Parliament voice as an extension of a vibrant nation-building wave within
the civil society sector. With the rise of the Patriotic Front, which is
unapologetic about being a Coloured people 'in particular' party, the Coloured
vote, or the Afrikanses vote, is being consolidated too.
The issue of this round
of elections is service delivery. The struggle, history, and contribution of
liberation movements to deliver post-apartheid South Africa is receding to the
background. The quality, type, and breeds of leadership political parties put
to voters are growing significantly. The service delivery dysfunctions that
influenced the 2016 and 2021 local government elections are aggressively
claiming their space as an issue for voters. RSA political parties are still in
the honeymoon of voter ignorance in international relations, economy management,
national interests, and other macro-determinants of managing a democracy of
such sophistication.
As the heat towards
voting day escalates, attention will be shifting to the state of readiness of
the IEC, public infrastructure, political tolerance and contest maturity of
political parties, and the extent to which a convergence of their functionality
aggregates to free and fair elections. The international voting process has
gone with few complaints and glitches. It is poised to be declared free and
fair. Delegations of international observer missions will descend to RSA, and geopolitical
interests about the outcome will find dimensions of expression. The
constitutional and democratic order will be tested for its resilience. The
stakes are as high as the political maturity of society, which is about
accepting and living with the outcome.
If any political party faces
the challenge of losing voters, it is the governing party. This is not because
it faces a challenge but rather because it is the party to beat. This is
evidence that RSA is democratic to the extent that we, as citizens, play a
meaningful role in managing public affairs. Regime change, which elections are
about, has always been regarded as an annoying encumbrance by incumbents unless
elections can be used to advantage against losing power. Therefore, any threat
to incumbents is expected to trigger all breeds of responses, including
resistance to change, from networks of patronage associated with the phenomenon
of governing partyism.
Universal adult suffrage, a national everyday voters roll, regular elections and a multiparty system of democratic government to ensure accountability, responsiveness, and openness are overwhelming founding values of RSA's constitutional order. The moment for the will of the voters to be the basis upon which the legitimacy of those exercising authority over the republic to be confirmed has arrived. The voter’s voice's time to pronounce has come.!
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