parochial boy
parochial_boy
Junior Chimp
Posts: 5,117
Political Matrix
E: -8.38, S: -6.78
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« Reply #52 on: April 04, 2024, 06:59:13 AM » |
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« Edited: April 05, 2024, 06:32:11 AM by parochial boy »
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Longish update on a few things that have been going on, starting with the official deadline for voter registration. Some 27.3 million people are registered to vote in 2024, a small progression on 2021, but ultimately just over two-thirds of the 40 million legible voters. When you factor in a likely turnout in the region of 60%, this means that probably only 40-50% of voting age adults will even end up voting. A pretty damning indictment of the overall enthusiasm concerning South Africa’s political offer.
In party news, John Steenhuisen and the DA have been suffering from a particularly sever bout of foot in mouth disease as of late. Firstly, while trying to clarify his party’s position on Israel, Steenhuisen came out with the rather remarkable line that “one person’s genocide is another person’s freedom fight”, which, well, the less said the better really, regardless of what you might think about that particular conflict. Somewhat worse though, was the DA sending a letter to the US embassy “inviting” it, along with other western nations, to send election observers as the DA do not believe that the IEC and the election process will be fair and free. Now, the IEC is probably the single best performing state actor and there have essentially never been any questions about whether it has been able to hold fair and free elections. Which all makes the DA’s putting the electoral process into doubt, with the subtone that “those people” couldn’t possibly manage an election fairly, a rather disturbing foray into the Trumpist world of electoral denialism.
Steenhuisen has however, now indicated that the DA is open to a coalition with the ANC, apparently to avoid a “chaotic” coalition with minor parties and/or the EFF. This somewhat undermines the whole idea of the MPC, the smaller parties looking increasingly just like a way for the DA to get votes without having people actually vote for it; but, in all honesty, this sort of grand coalition was always a very plausible scenario and it’s no surprise that it is now being explicitly discussed.
Somewhat related, the DA and Rise Mzansi have also been at loggerheads. The new party having named the Social Justice Coalition (and highly thought of in campaigning circles) leader Axolile Notywala as its Western Cape lead candidate and, much to the DA’s displeasure, is making the older party’s perceived neglect of poorer and non-white areas a centrepiece of its Western Cape provincial campaign. Notably this also helps Rise Mzansi ward off accusations of being a DA plant, which has become a particularly popular attack line used by the EFF (and the PAC, shadow of its former self that it is) against both Rise and a host of other parties (ActionSA, BOSA…) that have benefited from the financial support of various members of the wealthy Oppenheimer family (of De Beers mining fame). Meaning they get accused of being basically a version of the DA (or occasionally ANC) that is acceptable to middle class black people. Anyway, familiar story of a wealthy dynasty being accused of buying off political parties to all offer a vaguely similar mush of economically liberal policies – even if Rise in particular do highlight their base being in grassroots campaign groups (hence Notywala); and ActionSA pump their chests about foreigners etc, etc.
The ANC and MK party meanwhile are in the process of taking chunks out of each other. The ANC has unsuccessfully taken the MK party to court, attempting to remove them from the ballot based on the accusation of having stolen the Umkhonto we Sizwe brand. The MK party responded by threatening violence should they be removed before the court eventually decided in their favour. The end result being that, although the MK party is allowed to stand, Jacob Zuma himself cannot be a candidate, as he is a convicted criminal who has served a more than 15 month sentence.
Adding to this, the EFF, following its usual strategy of creating scandals about everything it touches – this time the question of whether it treated it’s MP Naledi Chirwa badly after her public humiliation after she missed a committee meeting to look after her sick baby, raising familiar questions about the authenticity of the leadership’s commitment to gender equality. But on top of that, Malema appeared to sit down to tea with Zuma, affirming that he is willing to work with him should it come to it. Itself an odd development. Once upon a time the EFF loudly condemned the Zuma clique’s corruption, before taking a much softer, downright positive, tone as they sought to pull Zuma supporters away from the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal. Now however, the MK party is clearly decimating the EFF in the province as those voters desert back to Zuma’s party, raising the question as to why Malema is so positive about Zuma now, when he had been so virulent against the IFP as it did the same thing over the last two years.
Finally, a few drop outs, the previously mentioned Change Starts Now, Roger Jardine’s new outfit, are officially out. They didn’t manage to get anywhere near the required number of signatures, making them something of a damp squib, but it’s not as if there is a lack of social liberal left-of-the-DA-competent-governance type offers this year. Similarly struggling were the somewhat infamous CAPEXIT party, you know, the Cape independence party whose ideology is largely horror at the fact that there are black people in Africa. Anyways, despite the attention the Cape independence movement gets, the party – who needed 13’000 signatures to get on the balances – managed to get 7’500 signatures. Enough to get on the Western Cape provincial ballot, but not the national one, and even here only after a panicked media whirlwind as they approached the deadline with only a few hundred signatures. Another single issue independence party, the Referendum Party also made the ballot; followed by an online petition attracting some 30’000 signatures calling for the party’s leader to be deported. The logic being that, rather hilariously, the leader of one of the two parties seeking Western Cape independence (namely from black people) is a British immigrant. Anyway, long story short is that the struggles of the two parties pretty irrevocably demonstrate that no matter how much attention it gets, the Western Cape separatist movement is ultimately the marginal fantasy of a few crackpots and not actually a serious movement.
Meanwhile an update on the municipalities:
The city of Johannesburg has plunged head first into a massive water crisis, with taps running dry repeatedly over much of the city. This is courtesy of failing water maintenance at the city’s various damns (combined with drought conditions, storms; all things that have to be reckoned with part of a post-climate change Highveld climate), which itself is the result of the chaos of constant changing governing coalition with handouts and public tenders being handed away as a manner of keeping coalition on partners, the culmination of degrading political and public management ever since Herman Mashala took power in 2016. The current mayor, Al-Jama’ah’s (a minor muslim interest party) Kabelo Gwamanda (who isn’t a muslim – don’t ask) seems completely over his head in any ability to deal with the crisis, which isn’t surprising seeing as he was only placed there to appease the various conflicting coalition partner.
In neighbouring Ekurhuleni public services are functioning somewhat better, but the ruling ANC-EFF collaboration has descended into chaos as relations between the two parties’ groups collapsed. A particular high point was the outbreak of violence on the city council hall’s floor as the EFF opposed the ANC who were supporting a motion to remove the mayor, the Africa Independent Congress’s (another micro party, see Johannesburg) Sivuyile Ngondwana, who was indeed eventually removed at a subsequent attempt raised by ActionSA. This was followed by the EFF celebrating as the city received an unqualified financial audit report, which they claim as proof that they are the functional partners (the EFF’s Nkululeko Dunga is in charge of finance) having been accused by the ANC, allied with the DA, of trying to hide their financial statements.
Significantly worse though has been the situation in Durban, where a city wide public sector strike led to the city being deprived of electricity, running water and with rubbish piling up on the streets during the first two weeks of March, with only a slow return to normal now. Ostensibly this was a wage dispute launched by one of the public sector unions, wanting to bring salaries in eThekwini to the level of the other big metros, although, as this is KZN there is obviously the unmentioned factor of MK party manoeuvering in ramping up the levels of chaos and blockage. However, in reality it is in large part down to the familiar story of corruption and maladministration, this time on the part of eThekwini’s ANC mayor Mxolisi Kaunda who has been singularly not up to the task of running the city and clamping down on the corruption. To the point where the EFF and DA teamed up earlier in the year to remove him, but failed down to the now also familiar story of support from micro parties like the African Transformation movement having their snouts at the barrel*.
Finally, another metro with problems is the city of Tshwane, home to the capital city Pretoria, whose mayor, the DA’s Cilliers Brink has come under fire for neglecting service provision in poorer areas. A familiar story of basic services falling apart, exemplified by the cholera outbreak in Hammanksraal in the north of the city at the end of last year. That is, a story of neglect in maintenance and contracts going to people whose only qualifications were a suspiciously close relationship to the decision makers. To add insult to this, Tshwane has just, in addition to being rated by the Good Governance index as having the worst decline in municipal performance of any large metro, for a second year in a row, failed its audit; having already submitted accounts late. This follows having been given repeated unqualified audit reports and ranking as one of the best managed municipalities under the previous ANC administration.
edit - and to complete the set, not mentioned yesterday but Cape Town, namely the Cape flats, is in the midst of a gangster warfare driven murder wave of terrifying proportions. Over the last three days of March some 94 people in the city were murdered. That's an annualised homicide rate of about 300 per 100'000, a lethality that is on a par with most war zones and rather points to a complete loss of control by the city's administration.
*You might note that there are a surprising number of parties with names like the “Africa something congress” or “African national something”, this isn’t a coincidence, lots of micro-parties basically give themselves names that resemble “ANC” as much as possible out of the hope that people vote for them by mistake.
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