The Democratic Alliance (DA) is beset with perception problems, some of them false, and most of them of its own making. Despite this, a local election vote should really come down to only one thing: performance.
‘All of you sitting here are being paid by the ANC government for free every month,’ Gwede Mantashe told a group of elderly women in Ekurhuleni. ‘All of you. Without doing anything.’
That’s how the ANC hopes to win votes. That sentence, by the national chairman of the African National Congress (ANC), really sums up everything that is wrong with the party’s paternalistic brand of socialism.
Mantashe’s statement is crassly condescending. As one of the women made abundantly clear to him, she worked and paid tax for 37 years; she deserves her pension.
It is a cynical attempt at vote-buying, suggesting that the ANC will reward voters with cash benefits, but only if they remain loyal to the party.
It conflates national government with local government. These are local government elections, and local municipal councillors have nothing whatsoever to do with social grants, which are a national competency. A local election cannot change national policy.
It conflates the party with the government. Social grants are a government function, not the discretionary munificence of the ANC. If another party takes over national government, they would continue to pay social grants, because they’re a legal obligation of the government. But again, this election isn’t about national government.
Just like with trotting out ‘Ramaphosa for President’ posters when the presidency is not up for election and Ramaphosa is not a candidate, Mantashe’s gambit deflects from the widespread failures of ANC governance at muni level.
To be fair, Cyril did go around the country apologising for the ANC’s failures and promising to do better, but the reality is the ANC really does not have any local government track record to campaign on.
Polling lower
Despite the catastrophic weakness of the ANC, however, there is little sign of the DA gaining in popularity. According to a poll by Victory Research, Ramaphosa has a 55.6% favorability rating, compared with John Steenhuisen’s meagre 14.5%. Even Julius Malema (25.2%) and Jacob Zuma (26.1%) are more popular than Steenhuisen.
The party as a whole is polling much lower than it did before the 2016 local government elections, at 21% compared to 27%. That is an ominous sign for a party eager to retain, capture or recapture key metros.
While the EFF is widely viewed as violent, and the ANC is widely viewed as corrupt, almost 50% of black respondents view the DA as racist.
This view is largely incorrect, but the party only has itself to blame for creating this perception. Instead of staying on message to explain its excellent set of values and principles, it has allowed loose cannons to make opportunistic statements that, though not intended to be racist, were unnecessarily provocative and easily misconstrued as such.
It has not been helped by a media that, frankly, is pathologically biased against it.
Yet the municipal elections have little to do with perceptions of national leaders, or even with values and principles. They have everything to do with good governance, effective service delivery, and local economic regeneration.
The state of South Africa’s municipalities is parlous. Billions just vanish, without anyone knowing who, if anyone, was paid with it, and for what. Only one in ten of the country’s local or district munis managed an unqualified audit in the 2019/20 financial year. Over half received qualified, adverse, or disclaimed audits, or didn’t bother to submit financials at all. And the situation is getting worse.
Performance
There are notable ANC-run exceptions, like Ethekwini municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, Senqu municipality in the Eastern Cape and Steve Tshwete municipality in Mpumalanga, but the DA dominates every list of top municipal performers produced in the last ten years.
Most recently, the Out of Order index compiled by News24 found that the top five muncipalities in South Africa are all DA-run, the DA runs 12 of the top 20 munis, and conversely, all of the worst performers are run by the ANC or Inkatha Freedom Party. On News24’s scorecard, DA munis score 57.7%, compared to 43.7% for ANC munis and 34.7% for the IFP.
Its election slogan, ‘The DA gets things done’ is a rarity: a political slogan that is true.
Alternatives
Besides the ANC and DA, there are a myriad smaller parties for which one could vote. Many of them are recently-established, and many are highly local ‘concerned citizen’ parties born out of disillusionment with corruption or service delivery failures.
The problem with such parties is that for all their good intentions, they lack experience. They do not have a track record upon which they can be judged, and they do not have the guidance, infrastructure and oversight of a major party behind them.
In many towns and cities, diluting the opposition could be a major concern. Voters who choose a local-interest party might prefer the DA as their second choice, but because ranked voting is not a thing in South Africa, they could end up with the ANC in charge instead.
Other small parties campaign largely on national-level issues, such as legalising pot, imposing religious laws, or promoting Western Cape independence. Regardless of the virtues of their positions, none of that qualifies them to actually run a local municipality.
Whether or not you like the DA is not really important. After years of blowing in the wind, it now shows promise as a party of non-racialism, free enterprise and liberal principles, notwithstanding its ill-disciplined communication (to put it kindly).
The fact is that unless you live in one of the rare non-DA-run municipalities that is well-governed and gets clean audits, there really is no other rational choice but to vote for DA councillors.
Doing so won’t guarantee you honest politicians, or a well-run muni, but it will maximise your odds – and your quality of life.
The views of the author are not necessarily those of Daily Friend or the IRR.