The missing three million

A discussion of election results sounds like a pretty boring way to start a blog. But South African elections have a broader interest because South Africa is one of a very few countries that moved from a totalitarian system to a genuine democratic system practically overnight. And this was in the context of sanctions and internal demonstrations rather than the modern regime-change methods which seem to have become the fashion in the twenty-first century.

Judge Johann Kriegler

The first democratic election in 1994 was run by the Independent Electoral Commission under the chairmanship of Judge Johann Kriegler. As with so many things at the time, we were very fortunate to have a man of his vision and skills to manage the process. Since his retirement he has been assisting the United Nations in countries such as Kenya and most recently Afghanistan, no doubt in the hope that he can work similar magic there. In 1994 South Africa had no electoral roll and no electoral infrastructure. The Judge’s first move was to declare that any person who could prove to be a resident of South Africa would be entitled to vote. Apart from solving the logistics problem, it offered an inclusive approach to all people in the country. The turnout was dramatic – nearly 20 million, a number that has never been repeated despite the strong growth of the population over the last seventeen years. By the time the second election came around we had an electoral roll and elections were restricted to citizens. The turnout was 16 million.

People waiting to vote

I have always wondered whether the politicians in the National Party (the whites-only governing party of the day) really believed that they would win that first election. They had pontificated for years that the majority of black people in the country supported their policies of what they called “separate development” and that only a minority supported the trouble makers who wanted order overthrown in their own interests or in those of the Communists. It is well known that a lie repeated sufficiently often and sufficiently firmly by people in authority often becomes accepted as truth. I wonder if this applies to the speakers as well as to the listeners. In the event the only question was whether the African National Congress (ANC) would win the key two thirds of the vote which would enable them to change the Constitution. (They did not – then – and when they did eight years later, they left well enough alone.) The ANC won 63% of the seats and the National Party 21% with a variety of small parties sharing the rest. In the three subsequent national elections the ANC won 66%, 70%, and 66%. During this time the National Party disappeared altogether and the Democratic Alliance (DA) - the philosophical heirs of the Progressive Party with its lone representative fighting apartheid for many years - became the opposition. It had 17% after the last national election.

Helen Ziller. Leaderof the DA

This brings us to the elections held last month. In many ways the elections are not comparable because these were municipal not national elections. But they tell an interesting story. It is at the grassroots level that the ANC government has been least successful. It is the district councils that are supposed to orchestrate delivery of services like water, electricity, housing, schools - many of the key things that people care about. Some have been reasonably successful – given where they started – but in most the orchestra has been hopelessly out of tune. Yet in the May election the ANC won 64% of the vote. Surely no cause for concern here? And the DA won 22% largely by mopping up votes from smaller parties in decline or by amalgamating with them. Business as usual?

President Jacob Zuma. Waving goodbye?

Well not quite. Something like 3 million people who voted for the ANC in 2009 didn’t vote in this election. Nelson Mandela - Madiba - has such enormous status in South Africa that few ANC supporters can find it in their hearts to switch from his party to another while he’s still alive. What will happen after he dies?

Nelson Mandela 2011

Then the frustrations felt by the majority in South Africa – ranging from poor service delivery to the lack of jobs – may be felt at the ballot box. I hope that this leads to a viable opposition which can focus the government’s attention on the big issues (instead, for example, of having our president dodging bombs in Libya on a wild goose chase). Yet many of the problems are structural and go beyond the reach of the government in any case.  And demagogues within, and outside, the ANC are starting again to say things firmly as though they were true. There is a danger that they may be trying (inadvertently perhaps) to turn the democracy clock back to before 1994.

Michael - Thursday

PS I leave for Lisbon tomorrow.  Maybe I'll bump into Yrsa before she bumps into Tim!