2024 South African general election, 29 May:
Mike88:
The 2024 South African general election is scheduled for 29 May. ANC, African National Congress, leader and President of the Republic Cyril Ramaphosa is candidate for reelection, for a full 2nd term.
Several opposition parties have formed an alliance called the "Multi-Party Charter" in order to form an united front against ANC and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), but, as of now, no unity candidate has been announced.
Polls suggest that the ANC is on track to lose its majority, which would result in a hung parliament. The latest poll by Ipsos:
40.5% ANC
20.5% DA
19.6% EFF
4.9% IFP
4.3% ActionSA
2.1% VF+
1.0% ACDP
7.1% Others
Duke of York:
If there is a hung parliament it would be first since the restoration of Democracy.
jaichind:
If ANC loses the majority I assume it will need to get EFF support which would shift its policy toward a more Leftist and African nationalist direction.
Estrella:
The provincial contests are something to watch too. Even if ANC is heading for an utterly catastrophic result, they have enough of a cushion that they'll almost certainly keep their majorities in the very black, very rural and very poor provinces of Eastern Cape (where they won 69% in 2019), Mpumalanga (71% in 2019) and Limpopo (75% in 2019). Western Cape is the only province governed by the opposition (55% for DA and only 28% for ANC) and even though DA has its own share of scandals and failures, they don't look like they'll lose much – even if they don't win a majority, they have a choice of right-wing partners like VF+ and ACDP.
Other provinces are less clear-cut. ANC does better among rural Coloureds in Northern Cape than urban ones in Western Cape (who are the reason why DA holds the province and Cape Town) and they won a majority here with 57% against 26% for DA, but the rise of various small Coloured parties like the frankly scary Patriotic Alliance, plus EFF taking black ANC voters will be more than enough to do them in. The question is if a coalition of DA+EFF+probably also two or three more parties will hold together for more than five seconds. North West is held by the ANC with 62%, but it's also EFF's strongest province (18% and second place) thanks to its strength among unionized miners after the Marikana massacre. I'd guess that opposition wins here too, but trying to hold together an EFF+DA+VF coalition would be... interesting. Free State is held by the ANC by a similar margin (ANC 61%, DA 18%, EFF 13%) but doesn't really have big cities or a strong non-white opposition demographic like miners or Coloureds so perhaps ANC will stay above 50% if they're lucky. In all of these provinces it's possible that if ANC is close enough to a majority, it will instead find a minor party (certainly not DA or VF+ and probably not EFF either) willing to whore itself out for a sufficiently big bag of cash, so who knows.
Gauteng is SA's richest and most populous province, but also one with major social problems (even by SA standards) with poverty, crime and violence against immigrants from other African countries. In 2019, ANC held its majority only by a hair (50.2% ANC, 27.5% DA, 14.7% EFF) and this time they'll obviously fall far behind. I don't think DA has much room to grow, but EFF does very well with frustrated young urban black people, and there's a new kid on the block – ActionSA, the libertarian-ish but mostly anti-immigrant party of Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba. Again there's the usual mystery of how the hell do you hold together a coalition ranging from wannabe Mugabe to wannabe Verwoerd, but what makes it worse is that Gauteng already has an experience with how well that goes. Since ANC lost its majority in Joburg in 2016, the city has had nine different mayors, the current one being a member of the tiny Islamist party Al Jama-ah that won literally 1% in the city election.
KwaZulu-Natal could be the most interesting race. A former bastion of the Zulu IFP, after Jacob Zuma was elected ANC leader and dispelled the old image of the party as 'Xhosa Nostra', ANC gained control of the province. IFP was weakened further after a pro-ANC faction left to found the NFP and for a while it looked like the party might be on the brink of death. They had something of a dead cat bounce in 2019 (the provincial result was 54% ANC, 16% IFP, 14% DA, 10% EFF), but they still won less than IFP+NFP together five years before. They've been doing a bit better recently though as a kind of default vote for (especially rural and traditionalist) Zulus disappointed with ANC. As for Zuma, he's still incredibly popular among his people: there were the infamous riots and lootings in Durban after his arrest for corruption, and his recently founded outfit MK Party is making a huge splash. A poll put its support in KZN at 24% (!) and it remains to be seen how far ANC will fall.
An American Tail: Fubart Goes West:
Is there any reason why an ANC-EFF coalition would be unlikely? I know EFF split off from ANC, but I think ANC would be a better ideological match than DA or especially VF+.
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