Stephen Chan
South Africa at the polls
It’s lunchtime the day after the South African elections and, although the counting will continue into tonight, all indications are that the ANC will take about 65 per cent of parliamentary seats.
This means it will not quite attain the two thirds parliamentary majority it needs to alter the constitution. However, the votes yet to be counted are those from areas which could heavily favour the ANC.
The DA (Democratic Alliance) will be the official opposition with about 18 per cent and COPE (Congress of the People) will peak at about 8 or 9 per cent. The two biggest opposition parties will therefore reach the 27 per cent I predicted in my earlier blog post. But it seems I underestimated the residual support of the smaller parties. Some received enough votes to survive in parliament and did not melt down as expected.
COPE, however, will be the official opposition in a small number of state legislatures, and the DA has taken Western Cape. It will seek to establish a model for the rest of South Africa—a little unfairly, given the prosperity in this area.
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Stephen Chan
COPE leader Mosiua Lekota will have to wait until 2014
Now that voting is underway, I’m going to put my head on the block and make some predictions. The combined opposition vote in the current South African elections will be about 27 per cent, with a reasonably high turnout. Even allowing for spoiled ballots, this will grant the ANC control of more than two thirds of parliamentary seats, enough for them to force changes in the constitution.
The emergence of COPE, an anti-Zuma ANC splinter party, will not be enough to halt this. It is not difficult to see why. In poor areas of the Western Cape, where I am now, ANC support is still strong. Here many people suffered for liberation, unofficially taking the name “ANC” as their organising banner when the leadership was still in exile. The party has never fully recognised the work of these “irregulars,” but what they did still has local resonance and still causes people to mark their ballots for the ANC. Even so, many of the “Cape Coloured” (mixed race) townships are dirt poor and have benefited little from the ANC.
In Gauteng province, where COPE also hoped to attract support, the ANC holds sway as well. Even the Cape Town-based, white-led Democratic Alliance party (DA) will beat COPE in terms of percentage votes gained.
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Stephen Chan
A monument to the ANC's freedom charter in Walter Sisulu Square, Soweto
Kliptown, Soweto, was where the freedom charter was signed. It was where the struggle against racism and minority rule began. Mandela, Govan Mbeki—father of Thabo—and even Robert Mugabe, who was a student in South Africa, all hid out in the “safe houses” and “shebeens” (illegal bars and brew houses) of Kliptown.
Today the nation goes to the polls. Here there are long queues to vote, but most of the old people are not interested. When Mandela used to stand to speak, the Kliptowners would form a semicircle around him, and offering a pliable but strong line of defence from the police. I met old women who had thrown themselves forward as his human shields. They are not voting today—they have lived in squalour all their lives and are disillusioned. It is the younger people who wait in the very long queues, the young who have hope.
The housing conditions of Kliptown—away from gentrified Soweto proper—can be just as bad as anywhere in Africa. It’s a slum. Parts of the film Tsotsi were shot here. Nothing had to be dressed down for the film. It really is like that. There are a total of 100 new housing units for a community that needs, by my estimate, 40 times that number. But the community—the original dumping ground for all those who didn’t fit—is now close-knit and wants to stay together. It’s an impossible circle to square. There is no land for the houses needed. But better provision of electricity and water would help. Houses use street standpipes. A fair bit of hot wiring seems in evidence. Instead of proper plumbing there is a huge number of randomly-spaced public chemical toilets, resulting in rock festival standards of sanitiation.
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