Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden made remarks to the effect that the American Latino community was more politically diverse than the African-American community. The remarks were made during an interview with black and Hispanic journalists, and while this could just be an honest mistake by the former Vice President considering his advanced age and signs of cognitive decline, it does contain more than a little truth.
African-Americans usually vote for the Democratic Party candidate at levels near or above 90%, as a June Washington Post/Ipsos poll shows, with African-American support for Biden measured at 92% on average. This is not just an American phenomenon however. If we are all honest with ourselves, there does seem to be a global trend of black people giving their vote unquestioningly to one party, usually a leftist party.
In South Africa, black people make up a majority of the electorate, (81% of the population according to the 2016 Community Survey). The African National Congress (ANC) has largely relied on this constituency to stay in power for 26 years along with numerous corruption scandals and declining standards of living. This is despite the fact that black people are over-represented among the poor.
Perhaps poverty itself helps to provide the answer. Black people in countries such as Zimbabwe, South Africa and the USA have a history of facing racial oppression. This oppression had economic effects (mainly the denial or weakening of the rights to property and the right to freely enter into contracts), which undoubtedly led to black people being worse off than they would otherwise have been.
This presents an opportunity for the political entrepreneur, the individual who seeks economic resources through the government tool of taxation, which is a respectable form of theft. Indeed, evidence from an exit survey conducted after the 2019 National and Provincial elections supports this. The survey was conducted by the Centre for Social Change based at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). It was conducted at 23 sites and 28 voting stations within those sites.
Interestingly, the chosen sites were largely townships and informal settlements, meaning that 91% of the survey participants were black (as compared to 81% in the general population) and 22% lived in informal dwellings (13% in the general population). While 87% of all survey participants said improving the economy influenced their decision to vote ‘a lot’ — the only stronger influence was a sense of civic responsibility at 90.1% of respondents — 66.3% of ANC voters were influenced by the possibility of getting government benefits.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which is an ANC clone in many ways, had 59.6% of their voters motivated by government benefits and the Democratic Alliance (DA) only had 49.9% of their voters motivated by such benefits (both were below the average of 63% for all voters in these areas). While 62.7% of all voters were influenced a lot by the prospect of land redistribution, the EFF leads here with 74.1% of their voters, followed by the ANC at 62.4% and the DA at 45.2%. The phrasing of the land redistribution question i.e. “to get land redistribution” probably means most participants were reflecting on their chances of getting land from the different parties.
From this survey, it is clear that promises of economic benefit for the voter play an important role in our elections. The same survey shows that party leadership is much less important. The DA had the least influential leader in terms of motivating the electorate, with 51.1% of their voters saying the leader mattered a lot, while the ANC had the most influential leader, with 53.6% of their voters saying the same thing.
Women were also more likely to vote ANC, with 64% of female respondents voting ANC compared to 55% of male respondents.
Interestingly, when it comes to specific welfare policies, RDP housing does not produce a measurable effect on voting preferences in this survey. In contrast, 73.1% of grant recipients voted ANC, compared to 59% of those who didn’t receive a grant. The other parties got more support from those who didn’t receive grants.
The fact that women and grant beneficiaries so strongly favour the ANC probably means the child grant is an important vote-getter for the ANC.
This is interesting in light of strong DA support for grants ̶ often exceeding that of the ANC, who are the electoral beneficiaries of the policy ̶ and means the DA is either that principled, or that stupid. It could always be both. Meanwhile, one of the few demographics which prefer the DA over the EFF in this survey is voters older than 50 years old. A bad thing when you consider that young people’s share of the population is growing faster than the share for older people, yet it also provides opportunities for identifying the voters who are most likely to switch to the DA within current ANC strongholds.
Leftist or left-of-centre policies are redistributive in nature, it makes sense that these would appeal to people who are poor, such as black people in South Africa or ordinary blue-collar workers in early 20th century Britain. The antidote to these lies in developing a narrative that connects what most South African voters want (a strong economy) to rational policies for achieving this goal. The DA is uniquely placed in terms of resources, local & provincial governance and an understanding of the right ideas, to develop this narrative.
The voters who are most likely to vote DA are precisely those individuals who do not want to be bribed by politicians. The party does not seem to understand this, believing that it should instead counter the ANC with larger grant payments, even though this is a policy that benefits the governing party. This failure by the political opposition to counter collectivist redistribution with the forces of individual self-interest and rationality, can only entrench the lack of political diversity among black people, at a terrible cost to the country.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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