South African General Election, 2019

[Republican Left]

Just a poster who has a few questions about South Africa's elections.

1) Does Cyril's victory strengthen the ANC's prospects? Does it kill DA and EFF's chances?

2) Do you think Maimane could help broaden and build up DA even if he doesn't win?

3) Was EFF's "win" back in the last election season a fluke? Will they end up like COPE which collapsed (and why did COPE collapse while EFF rose)?

4) How is South Africa doing?

Have a good week.

[parochial boy]

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The Coloured vote in the Western Cape has been traditionally been anti-ANC since the first democratic elections in 1994 -- as many have since incredulously noted, the key to the NP's victory in the Western Cape province in 1994 was its success with Coloured voters, which it had previously oppressed (but not as much as the blacks, which may explain matters). Since Patricia de Lille's Independent Democrats (ID), which snatched a good chunk of the Coloured vote in the WC in the past, and the weakening of the ANC in the WC since 2004, the urban Coloured vote in Cape Town has become nearly as monolithically DA as the white vote, with over 85% of the vote in Mitchell's Plain. The Coloured vote in Port Elizabeth now appear to vote much the same, as do the Coloured neighbourhoods in Gauteng or KZN. On the other hand, the Coloured vote in small towns and rural areas in the former Cape province are not voting DA at the same levels as Coloured townships in urban areas are -- the most obvious example of this would be the entire Northern Cape province, which is 40% Coloured, but only voted 23.4% DA in the 2014 national elections (or, at a more micro level, Central Karoo DM in the WC which is three-quarters Coloured but narrowly voted ANC in 2014). It may be worth pointing out that, in 1994, the NP won nearly 50% of the vote in the NC.

Just a comment here - the demographics of Northern Cape have also changed significantly since 1994, with a large increase in the black population and corresponding decline in the white and Coloured populations, largely due to internal migration; Northern Cape is now majority black by a significant margin but was easily majority Coloured in 1994. It is clear that the NP did better with Coloured voters in 1994 than the DA did in 2014, but there have been other changes as well.

That is to a huge degree specifically around Kimberley/the Frances Baard and John Taolo Gaetsewe DC's, which are a bit more developed, have some mining industry etc... The rest of the Northern Cape is still overwhelmingly coloured, and to back up Hash's point, a lot of those very remote West Coast/Kalahari coloured communities are still voting ANC, more so than they were in 1994.

Going a bit further on the "urban Coloureds vote DA, and rural ones tend to vote ANC" theme, it is worth pointing out that Cape Town is (probably) now plurality black. Primarily thanks to Xhosa immigration from the Eastern Cape, which has created a lot of resentment among the Cape Town Coloured community who used to benefit somewhat from the Xhosa being banned from the Western Cape during apartheid + lingering sentiment that the ANC is a specifically black party. It seems like you get a bit of that in other parts of the Western Cape that have seen immigration from the Eastern Cape, eg Garden route towns like Knysna, where the ANC vote is basically the same as the black % of the population, implying Coloureds vote massively DA.

Anyway, the fact that, in this the year 2018; Mitchell's Plain, Camps Bay and Durbanville all vote equally homogeneously for the same party is one of the more amusing realities of contemporary South Africa.

[Lord Halifax]

Anyway, the fact that, in this the year 2018; Mitchell's Plain, Camps Bay and Durbanville all vote equally homogeneously for the same party is one of the more amusing realities of contemporary South Africa.

Could you explain that for those of us unfamiliar with these places?

[parochial boy]

Anyway, the fact that, in this the year 2018; Mitchell's Plain, Camps Bay and Durbanville all vote equally homogeneously for the same party is one of the more amusing realities of contemporary South Africa.

Could you explain that for those of us unfamiliar with these places?

Mitchell's Plain - Coloured township in the Cape Flats (the east of the city, where Cape Town's non-whites were expelled to during the apartheid era), poor and was a hotbed of opposition to the apartheid regime

Camps Bay - mega, mega rich suburb on the Atlantic coast; predominantely English speaking and the kind of place that used to support the PFP/DP opposition parties during apartheid

Durbanville - humdrum suburb in the north of the city; very white and Afrikaans speaking, in short the kind of place that used to vote heavily for the National Party pre-1994

[Kosmos]

Just a poster who has a few questions about South Africa's elections.

1) Does Cyril's victory strengthen the ANC's prospects? Does it kill DA and EFF's chances?

2) Do you think Maimane could help broaden and build up DA even if he doesn't win?

3) Was EFF's "win" back in the last election season a fluke? Will they end up like COPE which collapsed (and why did COPE collapse while EFF rose)?

4) How is South Africa doing?

Have a good week.

1. If you asked me a few months ago, I would say he seriously strenghtened the ANC's chances. Now it seems like it was a honeymoon period, or as people say "Ramaphoria is fading". The cost of living is constantly going up and the economy is not doing well at all. Don't get me wrong: I'd still say ANC's chances are better with him than with Zuma (except in KZN), but if things don't improve soon the election is not going to be a cake walk for him.

2. Maimane has a big problem, and that is that he has this incredibly delicate balancing act to do. Every time he tries to say something with the hope of getting more black votes, he risks pissing some whites off. An example of that would be his remarks on Freedom Day about "white privilage". Lord did I see many angry comments over that one. Add to that the DA's problems in the Western Cape with the drought and the De Lille situation, and my bet right now is on DA doing worse in 2019 than they did in 2014.

3. EFF will in all likelyhood not end up like COPE. Because they have a distinct ideological identity and they are filling a void on the political spectrum. There is also nothing like the Lekota vs Shilowa feud; instead Malema is the leader and few would question that. However, EFF is not really growing either. They seem stuck around 6-8%. Maybe that's as big as that kind of party will ever get?

4. Not all that well, in my view. Unemployment, already alarmingly high, has grown this year. Racial tensions seem to be getting worse too, at least judging from social media. The fact that the ANC has started talking about amending the constitution to expropriate land without compensation also does not help matters.

[DC Al Fine]

Somewhat OT:

1) I understand which areas tended to vote PFP/DP (urban, Anglo, affluent liberals/progressives). Which areas/demographics switched to KP vs stuck with the Nats?

2) Are there any good maps of Apartheid era election results? The only stuff I can find is of the referendum.

[Former President tack50]

Apparently the South African government has started to seize land from white farmers without proper compensation

So, will that affect the election somehow? How popular is expropiation without compensation?

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/south-africa-begins-seizing-whiteowned-farms/news-story/8937f899bd3f131bfc4ffb648ea5c53b

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

I find South African politics much more interesting than most other countries.  I hope that the ANC falls.  Maybe a DA+revived Inkatha Freedom Party could do it.

[parochial boy]

Somewhat OT:

1) I understand which areas tended to vote PFP/DP (urban, Anglo, affluent liberals/progressives). Which areas/demographics switched to KP vs stuck with the Nats?

2) Are there any good maps of Apartheid era election results? The only stuff I can find is of the referendum.

I stumbled across this map of the 1981 election once (and I'm pretty sure Hash made it, so hopefully he can come in and take some well deserved credit because there seems to be very little out there in the way of apartheid era constituency results).

Anyway, the patterns seems obvious - PFP picking up seats in the rich/anglo atlantic seabord and southern suburbs of Cape Town and Jo'burg (notable concentration around Sandton) and also picking up seats in the Anglo heartland of Natal (but not Umhlanga, which is the uber rich suburb north of Durban) and getting one in Port Elizabeth (whose white population is predominently anglophone). The win in Grahamstown is undoubtedly due to Rhodes University.

(Also funny to see the New Republic Party - heir of the United Party which had collapsed into being an exclusively english speaking party - only winning seats in Natal).

I couldn't find much about 1987 though, but by the looks of things, the Conservative Party only won seats in the Transvaal (Afrikanerdom, but so was the Orange Free State). They also, surprisingly, didn't only win in rural areas - but also in the Rand, in seats like Roodeport and Randfontein which are heavily Afrikaner, but urban/suburban in nature and in the modern province of Gauteng. By the looks of it, most CP wins were incumbent MPs who had defected from the Nats, which is probably the "key" as far as which areas voted for the party.

[Kosmos]

Somewhat OT:

1) I understand which areas tended to vote PFP/DP (urban, Anglo, affluent liberals/progressives). Which areas/demographics switched to KP vs stuck with the Nats?

2) Are there any good maps of Apartheid era election results? The only stuff I can find is of the referendum.

I stumbled across this map of the 1981 election once (and I'm pretty sure Hash made it, so hopefully he can come in and take some well deserved credit because there seems to be very little out there in the way of apartheid era constituency results).

Anyway, the patterns seems obvious - PFP picking up seats in the rich/anglo atlantic seabord and southern suburbs of Cape Town and Jo'burg (notable concentration around Sandton) and also picking up seats in the Anglo heartland of Natal (but not Umhlanga, which is the uber rich suburb north of Durban) and getting one in Port Elizabeth (whose white population is predominently anglophone). The win in Grahamstown is undoubtedly due to Rhodes University.

(Also funny to see the New Republic Party - heir of the United Party which had collapsed into being an exclusively english speaking party - only winning seats in Natal).

I couldn't find much about 1987 though, but by the looks of things, the Conservative Party only won seats in the Transvaal (Afrikanerdom, but so was the Orange Free State). They also, surprisingly, didn't only win in rural areas - but also in the Rand, in seats like Roodeport and Randfontein which are heavily Afrikaner, but urban/suburban in nature and in the modern province of Gauteng. By the looks of it, most CP wins were incumbent MPs who had defected from the Nats, which is probably the "key" as far as which areas voted for the party.

That is a great map. Would love to see something similar for other elections, but I of course realize that such a map takes a lot of effort to make.

The leader of the KP, Andries Treurnicht, was the Transvaal leader of the NP prior to his defection. So I think that is another explanation why the party performed the best there. If I am not mistaken, it did however pick up seats in the Orange Free State in the 1989 election, and performed impressively in some parts of what is today the Northern Cape.

[parochial boy]

That is a great map. Would love to see something similar for other elections, but I of course realize that such a map takes a lot of effort to make.

The leader of the KP, Andries Treurnicht, was the Transvaal leader of the NP prior to his defection. So I think that is another explanation why the party performed the best there. If I am not mistaken, it did however pick up seats in the Orange Free State in the 1989 election, and performed impressively in some parts of what is today the Northern Cape.

Have you ever seen detailed results for other elections? Finding data is pretty tricky, the best I have come across are old Mail and Guardian articles reporting the results.

By the looks of it, 1989 results seem similar to 81 and 87 with CP picking up/going close in a lot of industrial and mining or agricultural seats in the areas you mentioned (eg losing in the industrial/mining town of Vereeniging by just 5 votes); and also progressing in Afrikaner heavy urban or suburban areas around Pretoria and in the West Rand. So essentially a rural and working class Afrikaner vote.

The DP seemed to pick up a lot in the cities - in particular the anglophone heavy East Rand/East Jo'burg (which isn't typically quite as rich as the northern suburbs), and around Durban - as well as in the Cape Winelands and outer Cape Town (which is Afrikaner, but not so much "Boer"), and in smaller English speaking towns like East London and Pietermaritzburg.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Weird question: how do Jews vote in South Africa?

[ag]

Weird question: how do Jews vote in South Africa?

Hard to say how an average Jew would vote, but most Jews prominent in politics have been either in the Communist Party/ANC (Joe Slovo) or in PFP/DA (Helen Suzman, Tony Leon). I am pretty certain most Jews would vote DA now, though an important activist group must still be with the ANC.

[Kosmos]

ACDP may also have some jewish support

That is a great map. Would love to see something similar for other elections, but I of course realize that such a map takes a lot of effort to make.

The leader of the KP, Andries Treurnicht, was the Transvaal leader of the NP prior to his defection. So I think that is another explanation why the party performed the best there. If I am not mistaken, it did however pick up seats in the Orange Free State in the 1989 election, and performed impressively in some parts of what is today the Northern Cape.

Have you ever seen detailed results for other elections? Finding data is pretty tricky, the best I have come across are old Mail and Guardian articles reporting the results.

By the looks of it, 1989 results seem similar to 81 and 87 with CP picking up/going close in a lot of industrial and mining or agricultural seats in the areas you mentioned (eg losing in the industrial/mining town of Vereeniging by just 5 votes); and also progressing in Afrikaner heavy urban or suburban areas around Pretoria and in the West Rand. So essentially a rural and working class Afrikaner vote.

The DP seemed to pick up a lot in the cities - in particular the anglophone heavy East Rand/East Jo'burg (which isn't typically quite as rich as the northern suburbs), and around Durban - as well as in the Cape Winelands and outer Cape Town (which is Afrikaner, but not so much "Boer"), and in smaller English speaking towns like East London and Pietermaritzburg.

Unfortunately that is the only map I have come across. Would love to find more.

I share your view of the Conservative Party as essentially a rural and working class Afrikaner party. The urban seats they picked up were in the poorer income segments.

The DP appears to have taken back every seat the PFP lost in 87, plus some seats from the by then defunct New Republic Party. Perhaps the most interesting pick-up was North Rand, which was an NP-seat in 1981 and predominantly Afrikaner. I am guessing it was an upper middle class or wealthier constituency.

[The Free North]

Ok, time for you to go bye bye:

https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1999718/malema-says-jews-are-training-right-wingers-as-snipers-to-kill-black-people/

[VPH]

Weird question: how do Jews vote in South Africa?

Hard to say how an average Jew would vote, but most Jews prominent in politics have been either in the Communist Party/ANC (Joe Slovo) or in PFP/DA (Helen Suzman, Tony Leon). I am pretty certain most Jews would vote DA now, though an important activist group must still be with the ANC.

Anecdotal, but the one I know is a DA supporter I'm pretty sure

[parochial boy]

ex DA mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille has set up a new party, called "Good", which I'm sure will be highly relevant next year...

[parochial boy]

here is an opinion poll from the South African Insititute of Race Relations.

Toplines aren't anything new - ANC gaining slightly up to 56%, DA dropping a fair amount to 18%, EFF  on 11% and everyone else irrelevant.

What is interesting though, is looking at the racial breakdowns. Black voters go:

ANC - 69% (+6% compared to September)
DA - 6% (-4%)
EFF - 14% (-2%)

and minority voters (ie whites, coloureds and Indians together) go
ANC - 12% (-2%)
DA - 61% (-10%)
EFF - 0% (-1%)

Which all suggests a few things -
With black voters, there seems to be some return of previously disillusioned ANC supporters in support of Ramaphosa. There is a line of thought that an increase in the ANC's vote on the 2016 municipals score could strengthen Ramaphosa at the expense of Zuma's faction, who would use a poor result to attack the current president.

With non-black voters, the big drop in support for the three big parties is probably a lot to do with Patricia De Lille's new party; which is hypothetically around 4% and should do especially well with Coloured voters who might otherwise have supported the DA. There is still a fairly reasonable level of support for the ANC among non-white voters, presumably mostly Coloureds living in rural areas (eg the ANC are still the largest party in predominantely coloured parts of the Northern Cape) and Indians (the ANC recently won a municipal by-election in the formerly Indian township of Chatsworth in Durban).

If you assume the White ANC vote is virtually zero, you potentially have around 20% support among Coloureds and Indians.

[Velasco]

ex DA mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille has set up a new party, called "Good", which I'm sure will be highly relevant next year...

This "Good" movement s seems to be a centrist populist thing, something like the continuation of De LLille's Independent Democrats... isn't it?

Patricia de Lille
@PatriciaDeLille
Started a new movement called @forgoodza
. Activist for GOOD people who believe in a GOOD South Africa

I think I fell in love...


"

[parochial boy]

ex DA mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille has set up a new party, called "Good", which I'm sure will be highly relevant next year...

This "Good" movement s seems to be a centrist populist thing, something like the continuation of De LLille's Independent Democrats... isn't it?

Patricia de Lille
@PatriciaDeLille
Started a new movement called @forgoodza
. Activist for GOOD people who believe in a GOOD South Africa

I think I fell in love...


"

Yeah, I wouldn't say she is great by any stretch - but definitely better than most of her old colleagues in the rest of the Cape Town DA. One of the few people who even tried to do something about the extremes of evictions and spatial apartheid in Cape Town (and she is like the second most popular politician in the country after Ramaphosa).

As far as I can tell, the new party hasn't really come up with any policies yet. It will undoubtedly end up as some sort of vehicle to represent coloured people's grievances. Which, given how badly the DA has treated them, and how much it has taken them for granted, is hardly a bad thing.

[DC Al Fine]

ex DA mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille has set up a new party, called "Good", which I'm sure will be highly relevant next year...

This "Good" movement s seems to be a centrist populist thing, something like the continuation of De LLille's Independent Democrats... isn't it?

Patricia de Lille
@PatriciaDeLille
Started a new movement called @forgoodza
. Activist for GOOD people who believe in a GOOD South Africa

I think I fell in love...


"

Yeah, I wouldn't say she is great by any stretch - but definitely better than most of her old colleagues in the rest of the Cape Town DA. One of the few people who even tried to do something about the extremes of evictions and spatial apartheid in Cape Town (and she is like the second most popular politician in the country after Ramaphosa).

As far as I can tell, the new party hasn't really come up with any policies yet. It will undoubtedly end up as some sort of vehicle to represent coloured people's grievances. Which, given how badly the DA has treated them, and how much it has taken them for granted, is hardly a bad thing.

Under FPTP that would be a disaster, but since they have PR, some competition for the non-black vote will be a good thing. Can't have politicians thinking they own your vote. Now we just need some more effective competition for ANC's vote than Malema.

[parochial boy]

Under FPTP that would be a disaster, but since they have PR, some competition for the non-black vote will be a good thing. Can't have politicians thinking they own your vote. Now we just need some more effective competition for ANC's vote than Malema.

The current factional battle in the ANC seems to oppose a nationalist-nativist Zuma wing (ie, similar to the EFF) and a Liberal Ramaphosa wing (ie like the DA). So my worry as an unabashed leftist is that South African politics eventually winds up as the EFF v the DA (presuming various splits in the ANC in the future). Not to dissimilar to the current situation in a lot of the countries which democratise in the 1990s if you want some #analysis.

In any case, the reason that ANC still does so well with black voters, is not just down to it's liberation credentials; but also down to the fact that it has built a welfare state that has left a lot of people materialy much better off than they were back in 94. So it is a transactional vote in that respect (as one white South African put it to me, "they're gonna carry on voting ANC because the ANC built them houses", which isn't exactly a bad reason to vote for someone imho...).

As for FPTP v PR, I'm not entirely sure it would make that much difference. I mean, the defining story of South African politics is racial voting; and the definining story of South African society is intense reidential segregation between racial groups - for obvious reasons. So I don't think the DA would lose alot under FPTP.

Like, if you look at the 2016 municipals; in eThekwini, the DA got 26% of the vote and won 30 out of 110 wards. Essentially, they won the historically "white" areas (excluding the city centre/golden mile, which seen a huge demographic change since 1994); as well as the old Indian townships (even despite there still being a relic of the old Minority Front vote around there).

In Cape Town, I think De Lille splitting the coloured vote would only potentially matter in some of the more racially mixed, newer, far flung townships like Delft and Blue Downs; and maybe some of the mixed gentrifying areas like Woodstock. The ANC are basically irrelevant in the older Cape Flats townships.

[Kosmos]

Patricia de Lille was undoubtedly a popular politician. But that was like 20 years ago. I don't think this GOOD will amount to all that much. But I could be wrong.

DA is also doing their best to make her look bad. New Mayor Dan Plato has already started the process of declaring Boo Kaap a herritage site, and he and Premier Zille unveiled the new social housing project in Salt River. True or not, but they are clearly hoping that voters will think De Lille was blocking those developments.

[The Free North]

I just got back from the country on a 2 week vacation and asked some of my hosts/tour guides about the elections. There were 2 points that stuck out:

1) EFF is going to stay popular amongst younger, urban blacks and will be a political force for some time. I actually had an EFF supporter in Gauteng tell me that older voters were too stupid to understand that the ANC != Mandela right now but because they lived through that era, they will never vote the party out. The new generation doesnt remember the 90s and doesnt care about what the ANC did 20-30 years ago. At least from the people I spoke with, the EFF vote seemed more like an anti-ANC vote than a ideologically motivated one.

2) The DA having an absolute monopoly on the coloured vote in 2014 (and years past) interested me and when I was down in the Western Cape I poked around for a bit more information. Basically, apartheid was kinder to coloureds, speaking Afrikaans is critical too, and one of our coloured guides put it bluntly: "We vote DA because we live in the Western Cape". There has been a lot of resentment on the part of the coloured and white communities with the black 'economic migration' which another coloured voter told me was being used as a tool to flood WC with ANC voters and flip the province. Of course a lot of this is known already, so the one thing I believe could be important for 2019 is the absence of Zuma on the ballot. I didnt speak to a single person who thought Zuma was honest or intelligent but there was plenty of praise for Ramaphosa and i think he could flip some of the coloured vote because he seems to be a far more capable leader so if there is any elasticity around, it might pull voters back to the ANC.


Obviously a lot of this is anecdotal so take it fwiw.


I should also mention I didnt hear a single word about de Lille's new party.

[parochial boy]

Another point re-the coloured vote is a couple of the events surrounding the end of apartheid that had a pretty major impact that is still relevant today:

The ANC made a pretty major tactical blunder in disbanding the United Democratic Front. In contrast to the educated-elitist and overwhelmingly African ANC leadership, the UDF had been a grassroots effort that drew its support from both Black and Coloured townships. So disbanding it made the ANC look like an Africanist outfit, despite being avowedly non-racial at the time, which was offputting to Coloured voters worrying about their future in the country.

Add to that, by 1994, immigration from the Eastern Cape had already started in earnest (as the Group Areas Act had been abolished in 1991) - and new townships like Khayelitsha had already sprouted in the Easter edges of Cape Town. The National Party pounced on this, and Coloured fears of losing their relative position under majority rule, by running, well, an explicitely racist campaign designed to scare Coloured voters into voting for them. For example, they sent an alarmist pamphlet out to coloured voters including the infamous line accusing the ANC of wanting to "Kill a farmer, kill a coloured" (taken from the more well known "shoot the boer" song). The pamphlet was actually eventually banned for breaking election rules, but the NP's campaign succeeded in putting off Coloured voters from the ANC.

Obviously, the ANC's more recent Africanist turns under Zuma has only contributed to that feeling, as do sentiments that Coloureds lose out from BEE and so on and so forth... It's probably not entirely unfair to suggest that Coloureds have been the group who have struggled the most in the post-apartheid era. Well educated whites have benefited from SA's reintegration into the global economy; Black people's lives have materially improved; albeit from a very low base; and Indians have generally prospered as they tend to be well educated and were clearly held back by the apartheid regime.

And another point on a different subject - Dan Plato and the DA's reaction to the whole scandal surrounding Clifton beach is yet another good example of the fact that they just don't really understand black people.