South Africa’s general election in May 2024 fundamentally changed the country’s political landscape when the African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority for the first time. Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall are the editors of a new book called Election 2024, South Africa: Countdown to Coalition. They fielded some questions.
Why were the 2024 elections so significant?
They were historic because the ANC lost the majority status it had enjoyed nationally since the first democratic election in 1994. The outcome resulted in the formation of a government of national unity – a de facto coalition of the ANC with the former opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and eight smaller parties.
The following five things stood out as noteworthy:
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The low participation rate by the voting age population shows growing popular disaffection from the political process. Roughly four in ten eligible South Africans voted.
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Although the integrity of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) remained intact, it did so in face of the gravest challenge it had yet had to face.
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The election confirmed the long-term decline of the ANC, posing major questions about its future.
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Despite the shift in the electoral landscape highlighted by the unexpected emergence of former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe party (MK Party), a substantial majority of the voting electorate continued to opt for the political centre.
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We argue that the rise of MK Party poses a frontal assault on the survival prospects of South African democracy.
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Are South Africans showing less interest in casting their ballots?
Yes. Voter turnout declined dramatically from 66% of registered voters to 59%. This was the fourth successive decline in as many elections.
Turnout of eligible voters, a more accurate account of electoral participation, is much lower than than turnout of registered voters, with the gap widening at each election. But in 2024 it dropped sharply to 41% from 49% in the previous elections.
South Africa now has one of the lowest turnout rates in the world.
The momentous shift in the country’s politics was not the result of an enthusiastic and involved electorate. In fact, if the MK Party had not produced a partial realignment in the KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces, it’s likely that the national turnout rate would have been even lower.
The decline in electoral participation poses serious challenges to the democratic quality of South Africa’s elections. Much responsibility lies on opposition parties finding ways to draw voters back to the polls.
But is the electoral system intact?
The electoral commission is tasked with administering elections, ensuring that they are “free and fair”. Over successive elections it has performed admirably, and has established a high reputation internationally.
The 2024 election saw the commission having to confront the most determined challenge to its integrity since 1994.
It has always had to face down challenges. Previously, these were mainly posed by small opposition parties discontented with electoral outcomes. It has dealt with these by post-election mediation and, where necessary, defeating them in the courts.
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Yet in 2024, the commission faced a qualitatively different challenge. Before the election Zuma declared that his party would win a two-thirds majority nationally, setting the stage for post-election accusations of vote rigging.
The party’s tactics resulted in a succession of high-profile court cases. In one it alleged that a staggering 9 million votes had been excluded from the results. Although it failed to substantiate this claim, it continued to maintain that the electoral commission and the courts had wilfully failed to acknowledge its victory.
Despite this, a Human Sciences Research Council survey conducted on election day recorded that some 92% of respondents considered the election “free and fair”, confirming that the electoral commission remains one of the country’s most trusted institutions.
However, we should not doubt that it faces major challenges to come.
What was the biggest surprise?
The great election surprise was the emergence of the MK Party. It swept 14.6% of the vote nationally, and 45% in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial election. It was, by far, the best performance by a newcomer in any of the previous six democratic elections.
Read more:
South African voters shifted support in 2024 but that’s nothing new — surveys after previous elections showed party loyalty was fluid
Its success was primarily based on luring votes away from the ANC. It also did some considerable damage to the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), whose own populist radicalism it outflanked.
What’s the likely impact of the MK Party on the country’s politics?
Central to the MK Party’s platform is its intention to move South Africa away from constitutional supremacy towards unfettered parliamentary supremacy. It wants to return to a version of the Westminster-style democracy practised under apartheid. Then, the National Party enjoyed virtually total power by controlling a majority of seats in parliament.
Zuma’s conception of South African democracy is racially demographic: now that white minority rule has been defeated, the party best representing the black majority – which he claims to be the MK Party – should enjoy unalloyed power. Hence the importance of the party claiming, despite evidence, that it was cheated of a majority.
Since the election, we’ve seen a steady drift of EFF members towards the MK Party, perhaps portending the EFF will have to merge into its rival. If, as is also speculated, Zuma can attract into his ranks disaffected members of the ANC who are hostile to the unity government, this could collapse the coalition government. Especially if the ANC polls badly in the 2026 local government elections.
Yet even if it survives, the prospect is that the ANC is likely to enter the next national election, expected in 2029, in considerable disarray.
Were this to lead to the MK Party replacing the ANC as the largest political party, South Africa’s future as a constitutional democracy would be placed at major risk.
What does the outcome say about the ANC’s future?
Although the ANC’s decline is due to popular dissatisfaction, because of its poor performance in government over a decade or longer, it is also the casualty of generational replacement. The party has failed to increase its appeal among younger voters, whose sheer numbers make up almost a fifth of all registered voters (18 to 29 year-olds are 18% of all registered voters).
As the ANC’s traditional partisan base declined over time, it was replaced by younger voters who are not guided by party loyalties. They are far more critical of government. They are not persuaded by the party’s traditional drawcards (liberation credentials, popular leaders, and the delivery of micro services).
To remain relevant to a new generation, the ANC will need to re-imagine itself as a modern, constitutionalist “post liberation” alternative to the more radical, populist parties that are gaining ground. Or it will decline.
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Few opinion polls conducted prior to the election predicted that the ANC would form a grand coalition with the DA, which many in the ANC regularly reviled as representative of white interests, free enterprise and large-scale capital. Yet post-election, this is what happened, a function of the ANC (40.2%) and the DA (21.8%) winning over 60% of the vote between them.
The end result seems to have been an outcome that most of those who voted wanted: a government of the political centre. Not one of the political extremes. However, the rise of MK Party suggests that the continued hold of the political centre is at risk.
