2024 South African general election, 29 May:

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Worth mentioning is that access to expatriate voting has been much more accessible this election. I was able to register to vote online for the first time, and I will be able to fill out a ballot at the consulate. Previously, the process was far more cumbersome. Lots of caveats here but given that the expat community is A) overwhelmingly white/pro-DA and B) over two million people strong, it could certainly make a difference on the margins.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Worth mentioning is that access to expatriate voting has been much more accessible this election. I was able to register to vote online for the first time, and I will be able to fill out a ballot at the consulate. Previously, the process was far more cumbersome. Lots of caveats here but given that the expat community is A) overwhelmingly white/pro-DA and B) over two million people strong, it could certainly make a difference on the margins.

Do expats get a vote for Provincial Parliaments too?

Alas, no - national election only

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

what even is MKParty's ideology? ANC but even more corrupt?

Imagine Trump lost the primary and started the Patriot Eagle Freedom Truth party.

Basically it's that, in Zuma flavour.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

A couple of weeks ago I went for a group run in a certain East Johannesburg suburb which I will not name (it's not Brakpan nor Alberton, but it's a bit like both of them). That morning, a guy that I had literally never spoken to before, in fact I hadn't even brought up politics and the extent of our conversation at that point had basically been to exchange names, randomly started on his theory about how the fact that whites were descended from people who had migrated to the harsh european climates meant that they had evolved to be harder working and more adapted and therefore it was totally natural that the whites would rule over the blacks. Now I am very fond of South Africa and South Africans. But it's weird that it's also literally the only place where I have these sorts of experiences.

Oh no you can also experience this among the Saffas who left for Oz. One of my old high school teachers never shut up about his days at the University of the Orange Free State and teaching at “proper” schools back before he was “forced” to escape the evils of change. Would randomly bring up anecdotes about living near the “scary” homelands.

Spent some time teaching in the UAE where there's a lot of South Africans and quite a few of those types. One guy actually fought in the Bush Wars and used to tell the kids about his fighting days. One pupil (was only about 10 or so) asked to do a project on Mandela - he said it was alright but he should mention why Mandela went to prison (basically saying to the kid he was a terrorist). Definitely think the place attracted a certain type of Saffa.

#notallsaffaexpats

(but yeah a lot of them suck, especially those that left in the initial white flight of the 90s)

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Some by-elections occurred yesterday in a few wards around SA (middle column is the results from the previous election):



tl;dr:

1 DA Gain from ANC
1 ANC gain from EFF
1 local-interest party gain from ANC
1 PA gain from DA
1 PA gain from ANC

Edit: Here's a thread with more insight than I can offer:

https://twitter.com/DawieScholtz/status/1783329156698128534

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

And we have a new poll out today as well. This of course included Zuma's party. ANC still under 50% but with a slight bounce compared to that Ipsos poll.

https://www.enca.com/videos/2024-elections-latest-enca-poll-puts-ancs-support-434

Is MK a one man show, or are there other well-known people that could basically be figureheads for Zuma?

Zuma will still appear as the figurehead of the party. His name + picture will still be on the ballot paper next to the MK party line: https://iafrica.com/zumas-ineligibility-to-run-wont-impact-ballot-paper-iec/

So I don't think this'll affect the Zuma loyalists too much.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Yup, completely independent.

There's a whole formula involved in both provisioning and allocation, but I believe it's computed from Registered Voters: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202401/50034gen2283.pdf

Seat allocations are as follows:
Eastern Cape: 25
Free State: 11
Gauteng: 48
KwaZulu-Natal: 41  
Limpopo: 19
Mpumalanga: 15
North West: 13
Northern Cape: 5
Western Cape: 23

The jury is still out on who it benefits. At least theoretically it would allow special community and local-interest parties gain national representation in the assembly. (For example, Zulu-focused parties in Kwazulu-Natal, or the Cape Independence Party in the WC). This would, by extension, dilute the influence of the larger parties. But the actual influence on government dynamics would probably be negligible.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Some turnout notes from various precincts:

https://twitter.com/DawieScholtz/status/1795795424571199942

https://twitter.com/DawieScholtz/status/1795817823576703323

Looks good so far for the DA, although Black turnout often revs up as the day goes on.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Has DA abandoned the white identity politics? if so great.

Quite the contrary, it was a central feature of this campaign. And I fear this result will encourage them to stay on that course, at the cost of being a party that will never be capable of getting above the 20% level.

I'm definitely in a bubble as a white CapeTonian who is also an expat, so can you elaborate on how they made it a central feature of the campaign? I'm not talking tone-deafness, that's always been a DA problem.

Policy-wise I've largely considered the DA to be roughly aligned with the moderate wing of the US dem party, or the Lib-Dems in the UK. Vaguely pro-business, vaguely socially liberal, boring, with minimal bomb-throwers. I think myself and my peers largely support them due to the excellent job they do running the WC, the lack of visible corruption/embezzlement, and the lack of viable alternatives.

Not trying to argue - just legitimately curious, since from my perspective VF+ has always been the party of racial dogwhistles and a desire for a return of the "good old days".

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Has DA abandoned the white identity politics? if so great.

Quite the contrary, it was a central feature of this campaign. And I fear this result will encourage them to stay on that course, at the cost of being a party that will never be capable of getting above the 20% level.

I'm definitely in a bubble as a white CapeTonian who is also an expat, so can you elaborate on how they made it a central feature of the campaign? I'm not talking tone-deafness, that's always been a DA problem.

Policy-wise I've largely considered the DA to be roughly aligned with the moderate wing of the US dem party, or the Lib-Dems in the UK. Vaguely pro-business, vaguely socially liberal, boring, with minimal bomb-throwers. I think myself and my peers largely support them due to the excellent job they do running the WC, the lack of visible corruption/embezzlement, and the lack of viable alternatives.

Not trying to argue - just legitimately curious, since from my perspective VF+ has always been the party of racial dogwhistles and a desire for a return of the "good old days".

Back in 2014 I think that was certainly the case, a lack of care and sensitivity and a degree of clumsiness but not necessarily bad intentions, but as lfromnj says, that's the principal thing that Helen Zille talks about these days.

But in particular there are three things that stand out as examples:

1. The letter to the US ambassador asking them to come in and monitor the elections, as in the IEC were too incompetent, the ANC too corrupt and feckless, the MK party too dangerous that all came across as a slightly too explicit attack on South Africa's democracy.

2. The flag burning ad, as in, why would you burn possibly the most visible signal of post-apartheid Sout African unity? No matter what the rest of the add did.

3. The attacks on ActionSA and Rise Mzansi for campaigning on the state of Cape Town townships. Steenhuisen explicitely saying that they were only there because there was nothing left to loot in the rest of the country. Like black people couldn't possibly run things and that the Western Cape was somehow "their" turf. Literally videos did the same thing of PW Botha saying the same thing back in the 1980s

That on the back of this sort of end of times campaign theme, the "Vote DA to save South Africa" posters you see everyone; the constant threats that a coalition between the ANC and the EFF or MK party would utterly destroy the country beyond repair. As well as the tones of the "7 million tax payers, 28 million on social grants" line or the "Eastern Cape economic refugees only here to take advantage of our wonderful public services". All things carefully designed to tap in to age old angsts amongst the electorate they were targetting.

I didn't know about the Helen Zille stuff - that's disappointing and it definitely makes me uncomfortable, but I haven't seen any of that reflected in the DA's manifestos or policies, and I don't think many non-engaged voters really know who she is. Like, just because Joe Manchin is "anti-woke" doesn't mean all US Democrats are.

The other three points, I would deem as tone-deaf, but you seem to be reading them in the worst possible light:

1) I didn't know about this. It's a dumb stunt but I don't see any racial grievance here - The IEC pretty clearly did handle the election poorly, and many people were quite clearly disenfranchised through their incompetent handling of the election. And calling a party corrupt when their last two presidents have had clear corruption scandals isn't wrong.

2) Again, dumb stunt, bad optics, tone deaf. But the end of the ad has the flag being restored with the tagline "vote DA to save SA." If your party's position is that an ANC coalition with the EFF or the MK party is an existential threat to the country, it makes sense as an illustration of that point. If the flag got replaced with the apartheid-era flag or even stayed burned, I'd agree with you, but that's not what happened.

3) Steenhuisen was pretty clearly referring to the risk of an ANC-controlled Western Cape, who have a clear record of enriching themselves using South Africa's coffers in every province they run.

As for their fire and brimstone campaign slogans, pretty much every political party in every nation says that their opposition is going to destroy the country in some shape or form. That's just politics.

I was born post-apartheid so maybe I'm not tuned in to certain dogwhistles older DA voters are hearing, but to me a lot of this seems like boilerplate political attacks based on the poor record of the ruling party. I would call the VF+'s campaign which is essentially "Make South Africa Great Again" more in-line with a campaign of racial resentment. But again, I'm very privileged and in a bubble, so maybe I'm missing something.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

All this comes together as the DA having this very clear message as "they're coming to get what you've got" which very deliberately targetted the fears that white have (had) both before and after 1994 about black people and which the National Party was already explicitely pushing when they were still in power.

I think we'll probably have to agree to disagree on the general idea of the tones of the campaign, and the sentiment that they exploit/reveal. I do agree there's a tone of "they're coming to take what's yours," but I see that more in a sense of a condemnation of the ANC, which has done everything in its power to line their pockets with taxpayer money in at least the last decade (largely to the detriment of the underprivileged!), instead of an explicitly racial sentiment. A couple of notes:

The thing is, those lines were principally down to the IEC losing hundred of millions worth of funding

According to the Treasurer this is untrue: https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/treasury-says-iec-was-well-funded-to-run-election-20240530. But even if it was the case - the ANC controls the IEC budget/appropriations, don't they? So it doesn't really undermine the sentiment of the letter. Like, when the Republican party in the US cut funding to the postal service, knowing that Democrats disproportionately voted by mail, everyone rightly saw that as incredibly shady - letters were written, condemnations were made. How is this any different?

Also, just yesterday, Julius Malema cast doubt on the electoral process by suggesting that ballot boxes weren't secured and that they lines were made long intentionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECdnSDKQFRY. So I'm not sure why you're implying that this language is limited to the right wing.

this end of times campaigning is mostly something you see by the far right in Europe, much less across the rest of the political spectrum.

Both sides of the aisle in the US campaign on with this level of severity and doomsaying. But even in the UK there's a degree of "Party X will be bad for the country and drag us further down" from both sides of the spectrum. I hate it as a rhetorical tactic, but it probably works, unfortunately. I can't speak to Switzerland and the rest of the EU.

But at the same time, a lot of the young white South Africans I know view the DA very negatively and discuss it awkwardly, precisely because they view it as a party for the interest of whites.

I do agree with this! I think there's largely a wish that there were alternatives to choose from that weren't minor parties or liable to collapse into nothing overnight (see: COPE, ActionSA). Out of curiosity, if it's not too personal - who do you support (or who would you support if you can't vote?). Kinda curious as you don't seem to like any of the major parties.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

in principal the queues hit their own electorate as much as anyone elses, as it was black people who vote disproportionately in the evening...It's certainly a far cry from what the Republicans do, which is to target specific voter groups they know don't vote for them.

As you've pointed out, black people in SA don't vote as a bloc, and the ANC's vote is largely rural, where VDs have the least amount of voters. So if one were conspiratorially-minded, they could say they engineered their strongholds to have the shortest lines (to be clear, I do not believe this, I just think they're bad at their jobs):

https://twitter.com/DawieScholtz/status/1795879864698023994

And in that respect it was unacceptable what the DA did, because it was copying from the Republican playbook of calling election results into doubt, without any evidence, of assuming bad intention and practice in what on the whole was actually a fair and free election on the level of what we have in the west. Certainly it's playing a far more dangerous game than the mere existence of long queues.

This is different from your original argument, though. We've gone from "it was racist for Steenhuisen to suggest the ANC were feckless and the IEC were incompetent," which I disagree with, to "the ANC/IEC may have been a bit feckless and incompetent, but the election was still fair and free, and it was dangerous for democracy for Steenhuisen to suggest otherwise" which I agree with!

It's why I brought up the Malema clip. Why is Malema questioning the election process characterized as "politically self-serving", and Steenhuisen characterized as "sowing racial tension"? It feels like the DA is being held to a completely different standard, based entirely around pre-conceived notions of the party and the fact that Steenhuisen is white.

I think that's the thing, even in the context of increased political tension everywhere, the US has a unquely toxic political environment that has (with France) been a factor in the country's democratic decline. Importing that to South Africa seems like a pretty bad idea.

Agreed that it's a rhetorical slippery slope, for sure.

Some sort of better alternative almost mathematically has to turn up.

The more I think about it, the more hopeful I am for an ANC-DA coalition. The DA can keep an eye on purse-strings and cronyism, and help ensure service delivery (something they are very good at). They can also reverse some of the revenge-based policies the ANC put into practice, like the removal of police from the Western Cape. On the other hand, The ANC can extract concessions on spending and welfare and maybe force the DA to diversify a little, and keep the DA from focusing solely on white interests. Save each other from their own worst instincts.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

Also interesting, quite a big loss for VF+ in Orania (the Afrikaans only town)

Not a single vote for ANC, though EFF gets a vote here.

I wonder who that one EFF voter is.

A contrarian?

Also, what exactly is "The Organic Humanity Movement"?

I had to look it up, it seems like it's a voting reform party, which is somewhat paradoxically opposed to parties. Their tentpole policy is letting the public vote for president directly. Other than that they seem like crunchier libertarians: https://ohm.org.za/