By Patrick Bond
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa's June 2 national and provincial elections confirmed expectations that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) would gain two-thirds of the vote, up from 63% in 1994, while a dozen tiny opposition parties scrabbled for the crumbs. Voter turnout, at 85%, was slightly down on 1994's turnout of 87%. Nelson Mandela's heir, Thabo Mbeki, will be sworn in as president on June 16, two days after announcing a cabinet that is unlikely to change.
The battle for second place and the mantle of official opposition was intense. The mainly white liberal Democratic Party scored almost 10%, while the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party of Chief Mangosutho Buthelezi won almost 9%.
Notwithstanding continuing evidence of his connivance in apartheid-era atrocities against ANC supporters, Buthelezi is expected to be appointed as one of Mbeki's two deputy presidents. The ANC-Inkatha "Government of National Unity" has been in place since 1994.
The Democratic Party's vote improved markedly from 1994 (from 300,000 to 1.3 million), thanks to an aggressive anti-crime, anti-ANC campaign that convinced many conservative white and "coloured" (mixed-race) voters to desert the New National Party.
The NNP ruled apartheid South Africa from 1948-94, and its dramatic crash from 20% of the vote in 1994 to just 7% in part reflects the utter exhaustion of those South Africans who once supported apartheid but now deny they ever had anything to do with it. NNP leader Martinus van Schalkwyk muttered that his party's recent strategy of reaching out to black, coloured and Indian voters had also alienated traditional racists: "We paid the price for inclusivity".
The other opposition party, with residues from the "old" South Africa but much more convincing multi-racial political organising, was the United Democratic Movement. The UDM is led by the former leader of the apartheid-era Transkei homeland Bantu Holomisa, who was thrown out of the ANC after he accused ANC leaders of corruption. Less than two years old, and able only to draw on private donations (other established parties received state funding), the UDM won more than 3% and is the main opposition party in the two poorest provinces. The UDM was openly endorsed by one of South Africa's main capitalist mouthpieces, the Financial Mail.
The tiny parties that have regularly voiced more radical political sentiments fared even worse. Support for the most popular — the Pan Africanist Congress — halved to 1%. The PAC leader, Methodist bishop Stanley Mogoba's barbaric call for criminals to be punished by amputation gained his party publicity, but also ridicule.
Three left-wing parties which registered for the first time — the Azanian People's Organisation (Azapo), based on the Black Consciousness legacy of Steve Biko, the Socialist Party of Azania, which broke from Azapo in 1998, and the Green Party — together could not muster even 1%.
In the contests for South Africa's nine provincial governments, the ANC won majorities in seven. In KwaZulu-Natal, an Inkatha-ANC coalition is likely. In the Western Cape, as has been the case since 1994, an alliance of the NNP, DP and a few small conservative parties will govern. In both provinces, the ANC won just 40% of the vote. In the other provinces, the ANC's vote ranged from 78% to 88%.
Gauteng, the province that includes the Johannesburg and Pretoria areas, also recorded an ANC landslide. The new provincial premier is Communist Party leader and former head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Mabhazima (Sam) Shilowa.
The election results mean that the ANC's excuses for ignoring its overwhelmingly poor and working-class constituents' needs — its inability to alter the constitution due to not having a two-thirds majority, claims of government fragility, or an unfavourable political "balance of forces" — will no longer be credible. Mbeki does not have the towering status and credibility of Mandela.
Despite its sweeping victory, the main problems in the constitution from the standpoint of left politics — the strong property rights clause, the granting of human rights (freedom of speech, association, etc.) to corporations, and the independence of the Reserve Bank — are not likely to be tampered with. Mbeki is expected to continue with the harsh economic austerity measures.
The ANC's pro-business perspective was expressed in the financial press just before the election by ex-activist Firoz Cachalia, now a leading ANC politician in Johannesburg: "Fiscal and monetary constraint and liberalised trade and capital movements ... which aim at the structural repositioning of SA's economy in response to globalisation, whatever their long-term benefits, have severe short-term costs for constituencies of voters who are among the current supports of the governing party. The ANC has, however, indicated that it will persist on its chosen path."
Cachalia added: "Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the alliance between the governing party and trade unions limits economic growth, there is considerable evidence that such relationships make growth possible through wage restraint."
Such restraint, added to a massive increase in unemployment since 1994 and declining social services, may not be tolerated by the masses forever. In Zimbabwe, the trade unions have learned from that government's attacks on unionists and have decided to challenge President Robert Mugabe's parliamentary dominance in national elections next February.
South Africa appears years away from a such post-nationalist political project. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to discount the possibility of an eventual split in ANC support, and a substantial left breakaway — or the left being tossed out of the ANC by an often vengeful Mbeki.
The SA Communist Party — which is, with COSATU, in an official alliance with the ANC — has a new general secretary, Marxist Blade Nzimande. At least two of the party's more vocal leftists, Jeremy Cronin and Langa Zita, have been elected to parliament.
The rumble of confidence at ground level resulting from the exhilarating ANC victory, combined with the ANC's ongoing failure to meet expectations, may hasten the rise of social discontent.
If Mbeki is to maintain the confidence of South Africa's powerful capitalist class, with international economic conditions as volatile as they are, the ANC must intensify the austerity in coming months, including beginning to roll back some of post-1994 gains contained in labour legislation. Rarely has such an overwhelming electoral endorsement had sown within it the seeds of such powerful contradictions.
[Patrick Bond is associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand's Graduate School of Public and Development Management in Johannesburg.]