1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,240 Hello and welcome to the So What podcast in which political economic analyst JP Landman 2 00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:16,400 discusses the issues uppermost in the minds of South Africans. You can find a written 3 00:00:16,400 --> 00:00:25,800 version of this content on JP's website, jplantman.co.za. I am Ruda Landman and I am your host. 4 00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:35,760 Hello and welcome to this podcast which accompanies JP's newsletter dated 8 April 2024. It's titled 5 00:00:35,760 --> 00:00:42,840 Simply Election Update. So we have 51, 52 parties? 6 00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:51,120 Yes, indeed. In 2019, the last general election, national election, we had 48, so it's a few 7 00:00:51,120 --> 00:00:56,560 more. Plus the independents that joined the fray this time. 8 00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:02,440 And the new kid on the block is Mr Zuma's Umqonto We Siswe party, the MK party. How 9 00:01:02,440 --> 00:01:04,040 do you see their impact? 10 00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:09,600 Well, so far the impact is very, very interesting. We don't have that many opinion polls to go 11 00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:14,240 on. We only have three, but if we take the average of the three polls, then they're polling 12 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:20,960 at the moment about 11% nationally. In the KwaZiDuna Tal province, they poll about 20 13 00:01:20,960 --> 00:01:26,040 to 24%. So they're clearly very strong there, but it also gives them a national footprint. 14 00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:31,760 Does that mean that they are the biggest party at the moment according to the polls in UKZN? 15 00:01:31,760 --> 00:01:36,360 It does suggest that, yes. It does suggest that. We can talk about the provinces later, 16 00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:41,480 but yes, they are the biggest at the moment. Now, I think what one must discount here is 17 00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:46,680 that they're having quite a nice bounce because of all the publicity surrounding the formation 18 00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:52,960 of the party. And we must see to what extent that will last. And of course, one must also 19 00:01:52,960 --> 00:01:58,240 see to what extent the party can survive the other party's machinery coming into action, 20 00:01:58,240 --> 00:02:02,480 election machinery coming into action. So, you know, one must treat these numbers with 21 00:02:02,480 --> 00:02:06,600 a little bit of caution, but clearly they're having an impact. 22 00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:09,080 Where do they find their support? Where does it come from? 23 00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:15,280 It's very interesting. It comes from the ANC. It also comes a little bit from the AFP, but 24 00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:20,440 it also looks as if they have, well, it doesn't look, they have certainly put a lid on the 25 00:02:20,440 --> 00:02:26,880 support of the EFF. So, people who in theory would have voted EFF or should vote EFF, if 26 00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:30,920 you look at profile, it looks as if they're not going to the EFF. They're rather going 27 00:02:30,920 --> 00:02:37,000 to MK. And in that sense, they're putting a lid on what the EFF can achieve. So, so 28 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:41,800 far, we can say there are two consequences from MK entering the fray. The one is they're 29 00:02:41,800 --> 00:02:48,480 taking support away from the ANC, which I think will tilt the ANC decisively below 50%. 30 00:02:48,480 --> 00:02:53,040 And secondly, they're putting a lid on what the EFF can do. And that must make Mr. Malema 31 00:02:53,040 --> 00:02:58,440 very, very unhappy. So, if we just compare what we have now to our previous election 32 00:02:58,440 --> 00:03:05,120 note, in the previous election note, we had the average for the ANC sitting at about 45. 33 00:03:05,120 --> 00:03:11,040 It's now sitting at 40. The average for the ANC sitting, for the DA rather, sitting at 34 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:18,880 23. It's now sitting at 24, basically the same. For the EFF, it was 13%. It's now 11. 35 00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:23,560 On counter, of course, there was nothing because they were not there yet. They also now poll 36 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:30,160 11. So, if you take the 11 of EFF and 11 of MK, you get 22. And that sort of intuitively 37 00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:35,400 feels right. And then the IFP, according to these polls, have lost a little bit of support. 38 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:40,600 They went from 5% to 3%. So, to answer your question, where does this support comes from? 39 00:03:40,600 --> 00:03:46,560 It comes from the ANC. It comes from the IFP. And it comes from a pool of voters that probably 40 00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:51,080 would have voted EFF, but is now preferring MK. 41 00:03:51,080 --> 00:03:57,800 Each voter will get three ballot papers this time, as opposed to two the last time. How 42 00:03:57,800 --> 00:03:59,800 exactly does it work? 43 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:05,480 It's complicated. The change is because of independence. You will recall that there was 44 00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:12,040 a big hullabaloo, constitutional court applications and agitation and so on. And the legislation 45 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:17,200 was changed. And now independence can stand for the national parliament and they can stand 46 00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:21,480 for provincial parliament. Now, in order to accommodate the independence, there will now 47 00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:28,520 be three ballot papers. The first one, which will elect 200 members of the National Assembly, 48 00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:33,200 you simply vote for political parties. So, the 50 odd parties will be on the list and 49 00:04:33,200 --> 00:04:38,480 you choose who's your favourite and that's it. The second ballot paper will be the same. 50 00:04:38,480 --> 00:04:44,800 It will be the list of parties participating and you choose your party. Or on the second 51 00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:48,880 list there will also be independence. So, you have to decide. Do you choose a party 52 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:53,440 or do you choose an independent? You'll have one vote only and you'll make your choice. 53 00:04:53,440 --> 00:04:58,200 And that is the, if I can put it like that, the second 200 members. 54 00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:03,520 Correct. That's the remainder of the 400 members for the National Assembly. So, the second 55 00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:09,000 200, as you put it, that will be elected there. And then the third ballot paper is to elect 56 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:13,760 the provincial parliament or the provincial legislature. That is a combination of political 57 00:05:13,760 --> 00:05:17,880 parties and independence and you choose who you want to have there. Now, I think I was 58 00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:23,000 just pointing out that at the moment, although we have more than 50 political parties participating, 59 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:28,640 there are on the national list only six independents and on the various provincial lists another 60 00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:33,400 five. So, you're looking at a total of 11 independents and you must ask yourself the 61 00:05:33,400 --> 00:05:38,880 question was all this hullabaloo now really worth it? It's a very meager harvest, but 62 00:05:38,880 --> 00:05:41,800 that's a different point. 63 00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:48,560 Then of course, one of the main worries for the country as a whole, what happens if no 64 00:05:48,560 --> 00:05:54,440 one gets 50% in the first place? How will parliament then elect a president? What if 65 00:05:54,440 --> 00:05:56,000 there's a deadlock? 66 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:02,000 Okay. The procedure is fairly straightforward. Within 14 days after the election results 67 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:09,120 are declared. Now, the election is on Wednesday the 29th. It'll probably be the voting and 68 00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:14,320 the verification and the auditing was normally completed by Saturday. So, by Saturday the 69 00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:20,200 second of June, the electoral commission will announce the results. Then 14 days from that 70 00:06:20,200 --> 00:06:25,320 date, parliament must meet and they have to choose a president. That's their first order 71 00:06:25,320 --> 00:06:26,320 of business. 72 00:06:26,320 --> 00:06:31,400 And the chairman in that case is the Chief Justice. 73 00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:35,680 Chief Justice. Yeah. And he doesn't vote, of course. So, it's the 400 members of the 74 00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:41,760 National Assembly. You will need 201 votes to become president. If you don't get 201 75 00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:47,640 votes on the first round of voting, then the candidate with the least number of votes will 76 00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:52,840 fall away and you vote again. Candidate with the least number of votes fall away, vote 77 00:06:52,840 --> 00:06:59,700 again and you carry on until somebody has got 201. In the unlikely event after a number 78 00:06:59,700 --> 00:07:05,520 of voting rounds that nobody gets a majority, but they get the same number of votes, say 79 00:07:05,520 --> 00:07:13,480 190 each or 185 votes each. Then parliament has to adjourn for the week and then come 80 00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:17,480 back and try again. Now, obviously in that week there will then be horse trading and 81 00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:23,440 deal making and negotiation and so on. Come back after a week, vote again and hopefully 82 00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:28,920 you get somebody that'll have 201 votes and then you have a president. If again parliament 83 00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:35,360 cannot elect a president, then parliament has to be dissolved and the country must have 84 00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:40,280 new elections. Now, I don't think there's anybody that'll have the stomach for that, 85 00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:46,480 all the energy, all the money. So, the pressure on political parties will be enormous to come 86 00:07:46,480 --> 00:07:53,240 to some kind of a consensus, some kind of an agreement and elect a president. 87 00:07:53,240 --> 00:07:58,160 That's the president, but then we're back to the question of coalitions because if no 88 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:03,880 party has 50% and for the first time really now JP, you are saying you don't think the 89 00:08:03,880 --> 00:08:08,040 ANC is going to get there. So, how do you see it? 90 00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:14,600 Yeah, if MK does as well as the polls suggest they will do, then the ANC cannot get to 50. 91 00:08:14,600 --> 00:08:19,440 I think that's just mathematically not possible. So, what will then have to happen, they will 92 00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:24,680 have to invite coalition partners. Now again, it depends by how much they miss 50. If they 93 00:08:24,680 --> 00:08:30,960 miss 50 by 2%, let's say they get 48, well then it will be very easy to make a coalition 94 00:08:30,960 --> 00:08:36,560 of the IFP. They will have 3 or 4% of the vote and you can run. And in fact, the leader 95 00:08:36,560 --> 00:08:43,080 of the IFP, Mr. Slavisa said that he is willing to do what he calls a government of national 96 00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:48,960 unity, i.e. code language for I will make a deal with the ANC because that's what we 97 00:08:48,960 --> 00:08:56,640 did in 1994. So, that door is certainly open. If they miss it by a bigger margin, say 10%, 98 00:08:56,640 --> 00:09:01,920 so the ANC only gets 40%. Now they are 10 short of 50. Then the IFP and other small 99 00:09:01,920 --> 00:09:06,880 parties won't help them. Then they will have to look at a bigger party and then their choice 100 00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:12,640 will be either the DA on the one side or the EFF and MK on the other side. I think it's 101 00:09:12,640 --> 00:09:19,360 highly unlikely that you will see a coalition with the EFF and MK at national level. I think 102 00:09:19,360 --> 00:09:21,720 it's very, very unlikely. What makes you say that? 103 00:09:21,720 --> 00:09:27,360 Well, a number of things. First of all, the fight between MK and ANC is a blood feud. 104 00:09:27,360 --> 00:09:33,680 It's a brutal threat and we all know how vicious that can be and how people just don't count 105 00:09:33,680 --> 00:09:38,000 work together around that. If you look at the EFF, a number of signals are coming from 106 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:45,660 the political arena telling us that they are struggling to give substance to the coalition 107 00:09:45,660 --> 00:09:51,280 agreements that they have. I think the majority of people in the ANC do not want to go with 108 00:09:51,280 --> 00:09:57,800 the EFF. As I said in the last note, your support for the ANC EFF coalition is mainly 109 00:09:57,800 --> 00:10:04,600 located in the Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal provinces. That's where the push for the EFF is. The 110 00:10:04,600 --> 00:10:11,200 rest of the country, not so much. I mean the rest of the ANC in the country. So I don't 111 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:15,720 think that will happen. I think if it comes down to a choice between EFF on the one hand 112 00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:21,200 or DA on the other hand, I think the ANC will go with the DA. Then you have a broad coalition 113 00:10:21,200 --> 00:10:27,840 of the middle. That coalition will enjoy the support of at least two thirds of South Africans. 114 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:33,040 That can then have interesting consequences in the longer term, medium to longer term, 115 00:10:33,040 --> 00:10:38,480 largely around a reconfiguration of our politics. What I think we're going to see in the short 116 00:10:38,480 --> 00:10:44,960 term after the election is that the parties on the left, that's the EFF, it's Mr. Zuma's 117 00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:51,080 party, it's ACMK, it's Ace Machashula's party, ACT, African Congress of Transformation, and 118 00:10:51,080 --> 00:10:55,800 a few other, call them left-wing parties. I think they will come together in some kind 119 00:10:55,800 --> 00:11:00,600 of an arrangement. What we have at the moment is the MPC, the multi-party charter or the 120 00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:05,560 Moonshot coalition. You have them on the right of the ANC. I think you're going to see a 121 00:11:05,560 --> 00:11:12,200 similar Moonshot developing on the left of the ANC, quite soon after the election. If 122 00:11:12,200 --> 00:11:18,280 they're excluded from power, they're excluded from government, these left-wing parties will 123 00:11:18,280 --> 00:11:23,600 have an incentive to come together. Mr. Zuma has already alluded to that. You'll then have 124 00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:28,240 a left-wing Moonshot coalition. You will have a right-wing Moonshot coalition. You will 125 00:11:28,240 --> 00:11:34,040 have the ANC and the DA in the middle. Then you can have over a period of time, five years 126 00:11:34,040 --> 00:11:40,480 or more, you can have a reconfiguration. That reconfiguration, I think, conceptually will 127 00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:45,740 come down to the following. You will have on the right, people with free market thinking. 128 00:11:45,740 --> 00:11:53,360 That's the DA and that group of people. In the middle, you will have the ANC and parts 129 00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:59,400 of the DA working with what I would call a social democratic value system. On the left, 130 00:11:59,400 --> 00:12:05,640 you will have RET, radical economic transformation. That's a nice little division, certainly in 131 00:12:05,640 --> 00:12:08,960 terms of ideas between the main political groupings. 132 00:12:08,960 --> 00:12:13,720 You've described that as a healthy development. I think it's very healthy. In South Africa 133 00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:20,720 and in the Anglo-Saxon world where our political tradition was formed, we're not used to coalitions 134 00:12:20,720 --> 00:12:26,760 or the idea of social democracy. Americans, for example, don't understand it at all. Neither 135 00:12:26,760 --> 00:12:31,920 do the English. In Europe, it's a standard thing. It's a very, very standard thing. Germany, 136 00:12:31,920 --> 00:12:36,880 most successful economy on the continent, has been run by a social democratic value 137 00:12:36,880 --> 00:12:43,400 system ever since the Second World War. I think for South Africa, in our circumstances, 138 00:12:43,400 --> 00:12:50,800 a social democratic solution is quite a good one and appealing one. You will then have 139 00:12:50,800 --> 00:12:54,800 free markets, social democratic, radical economic transformation. 140 00:12:54,800 --> 00:13:00,320 That can be, I'm now really going speculating wild here and I'm talking long term, but that 141 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:08,120 can help to replace identity politics. Then you move from the current regime of identity 142 00:13:08,120 --> 00:13:15,280 politics to a regime where you have identity politics, but also a value based system that 143 00:13:15,280 --> 00:13:20,920 underlies your choice. That's why I think it will be a healthy development. 144 00:13:20,920 --> 00:13:24,160 In summary, so what? First, the MK Party? 145 00:13:24,160 --> 00:13:30,720 Yeah, first, the MK Party is affecting the ANC quite clearly. If they survive the ANC's 146 00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:36,160 counter campaign, they can get the numbers that the polls suggest and they will take 147 00:13:36,160 --> 00:13:43,360 4 or 5% away nationally from the ANC. Paradoxically, the second impact of the MK is that they are 148 00:13:43,360 --> 00:13:48,880 putting a lid on the growth of the EFF. I think that'll be a bitter pill for Mr. Malema 149 00:13:48,880 --> 00:13:53,160 to swallow and he'll be very disappointed, but that's the way the cookie is scrambling 150 00:13:53,160 --> 00:13:54,960 at the moment. 151 00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:57,200 So what for the multi-party charter? 152 00:13:57,200 --> 00:14:03,160 The multi-party charter has got no chance of realizing their ambition, their public 153 00:14:03,160 --> 00:14:11,400 ambition of replacing the government. They're polling at about 34% at the moment, 33, 34. 154 00:14:11,400 --> 00:14:16,240 Even if they go up to 40% by election day, there's still a hell of a distance from 40% 155 00:14:16,240 --> 00:14:21,840 to 50%. So they're not going to replace the new government, not going to happen. The fact 156 00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:26,760 that people claim that I think is a bit of a misrepresentation. But constituents of the 157 00:14:26,760 --> 00:14:33,800 multi-party charter can indeed join up with the ANC. The DA, for example, the IFP, those 158 00:14:33,800 --> 00:14:39,280 are very real possibilities. Yeah, and I think what we're going to see, as I've said, is 159 00:14:39,280 --> 00:14:45,440 a national, on a national level, the ANC-IFP coalition. And you may also see that in the 160 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:51,040 provinces, but the provincial situation becomes more difficult, more interests, more parties. 161 00:14:51,040 --> 00:14:55,600 So let's see what the final vote count is before we pronounce. 162 00:14:55,600 --> 00:14:59,200 So then the only thing to say is happy voting. 163 00:14:59,200 --> 00:15:02,760 Absolutely. Go and vote and happy voting. 164 00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:04,320 Thank you very much. Goodbye. 165 00:15:04,320 --> 00:15:06,720 Thank you. 166 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:11,860 Thank you for listening to the So What podcast. If you enjoy this content, please don't forget 167 00:15:11,860 --> 00:15:16,780 to leave a review and a rating and please consider subscribing so you don't miss any 168 00:15:16,780 --> 00:15:22,240 future episodes. Also, tell your friends. Remember, you can find a written version of 169 00:15:22,240 --> 00:15:50,080 all JP's content at jplandman.co.za.