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South Africa: ANC wins Overwhelming Majority

But lower poll indicates growing alienation

THE AFRICAN National Congress's (ANC) overwhelming majority in South Africa's general election - nearly 70% of the vote - has predictably been hailed by its leadership and most of the media as a ringing endorsement of its policies. This view has been reinforced by the crushing defeat of the parties of apartheid.

Weizmann Hamilton, Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI South Africa)

The New National Party (NNP), reduced from 20% in the first democratic elections in 1994 to just under 7% in 1999, received a humiliating 257,000 votes - less than 1%. The party that brutally oppressed the black majority for nearly 50 years has been virtually obliterated and is facing a well deserved extinction.

The bloodstained Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), that collaborated with the apartheid regime in slaughtering over 20,000 black people in the 1980s and early 1990s, has slipped back from 10% of the national vote in 1994 to just under 7%.

More significantly, it has lost control of its traditional stronghold, KwaZulu Natal, and will not even be able to put together a ruling majority with its new partner, the Democratic Alliance (DA) despite the failure of the ANC to gain an outright majority in that province.

The increased vote for the DA (an offspring of the white liberal former Democratic Party that served as an opposition party under apartheid representing the interests of sections of big business) to 12.3% (1.7% in 1994 and 8.5% in 1999) is due mainly to the fact that it benefited from the collapse of the NNP, whose support amongst the coloured (mixed race) who are the majority in the Western Cape, and whites, collapsed completely after it entered into an alliance with the ANC in the NNP's stronghold.

Lack of alternative

HOWEVER, THE 10.8 million votes for the ANC do not represent an increase in support for its policies. It benefited from the fact that it is still seen as the party of liberation and that there is no viable alternative. Many voters cast their ballot for the ANC despite their anger and bitterness at the government's big business policies.

With virtually all the opposition parties offering capitalist economic programmes fundamentally the same as the ANC's, voters had little choice. Democratic Socialist Movement comrades, who sold over 250 copies of Izwi la Basebenzi election special on election day, reported that many voters expressed this sentiment.

Many ANC voters were persuaded that the increases in pension, child support and disability grants announced in the 2003 year-end budget, however slight, together with the promise of one million jobs in five years, and the commencement of the AIDS drugs roll-out on 1 April, signaled a recognition of the plight of the poor by the government and the beginning of a change of policies to address poverty and unemployment.

The ANC's euphoria masks a growing concern and a genuine surprise that they are getting away with policies that impoverish the majority and enrich a minority. This 70% vote is a poisoned chalice. The smashing of the capitalist opposition parties by the masses has removed all vestiges of the lame excuses the ANC has been putting forward for policies that have led to 8 million unemployed, 57% living in poverty, and 650 people dying every day from HIV/AIDS.

ANC - a bosses' party

THE ANC is now the main party of the capitalist class. Unlike in 1994, when its vote was massaged downwards to prevent it from registering the two-thirds majority that would empower it to change the constitution, and the hysteria about a two-thirds majority in 1999 (when the ANC miraculously fell short of a two-thirds majority by the exact number of votes for one seat) the markets have taken the 70% majority in their stride.

Since the floor-crossing episode in 2000, when parliamentarians were given the opportunity to join other parties and a majority went over to the ANC, it has had a two-thirds majority anyway. The ANC has earned the trust of the capitalist class and the reward of a R13 million donation for its election campaign.

Committed not only to maintaining capitalism but to creating a black capitalist class through the policy of black economic empowerment, it remains committed to policies that will create further misery for the working-class majority.

The continued growth of the black capitalist and middle class will accelerate the process of class polarisation. This will fertilise the soil for the development of a mass workers' party. Last year already, a survey of Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) affiliates revealed that one-third of workers would support the formation of a workers' party to contest the elections.

The Cosatu leadership is part of the Tripartite Alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP - which received only 4% support in the Cosatu survey). Despite their humiliation by president Thabo Mbeki and SACP central committee members in his cabinet during the anti-privatisation general strike in 2002, they once again campaigned for an ANC vote. But they will not be able to stop this process.

The resignation of over 6,000 members of the Chemical union when they were denied their demand for a referendum on whether Cosatu should remain part of the Tripartite Alliance is a sign of things to come.

These workers joined an independent union. This process will repeat itself in future. The DSM's campaign for a mass workers' party on a socialist programme will find an increasing echo in the future.

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Ten Years On - Disillusionment With Political Process

OF FAR greater significance than the ANC's majority, is the decline in the number who voted both in percentage terms and absolute numbers.

A strenuous effort to increase the number of registered voters by the Independent Electoral Commission pushed the number to 20 million.

But seven million could not be persuaded despite incentives such as free identification books, an expansion of registration points, two major registration drives and continued registration at municipal offices.

Only 48% of under-25's registered. Of the 20 million registered, only 15 million voted, down from 16 million in 1999 and 19.5 million in 1994. In percentage terms it has gone down from 89% in 1994 to 75%.

The ANC's landslide in fact represents only 38% of eligible voters. One pre-election survey revealed that the majority of those who did not register did not want to register.

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