Since the election on 29 May 2024, a narrative has taken hold that misrepresents how South Africans voted.
It is well described in a tweet by former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela on 2 June:
This analysis exhibits significant flaws. Most obviously, 40% is not the majority of voters; if it was, the ANC could have formed a government by itself and would not have had to build a grand coalition under the fancy “Government of National Unity” label.
What’s more, low turnout of 58% meant that only 23% of registered voters actually voted for the ANC. If you include people who could have registered to vote but didn’t, you find that only 16% of eligible voters voted for the ANC. In other words, while 6.5 million South Africans voted for the ANC, 35 million potential voters – who should surely be considered “we the people” – did not. It is not a ringing endorsement of ANC policies.
Quite the contrary. In the 2024 election, voters abandoned the ANC in droves. Votes for the governing party plummeted by over a third, from 10 million in 2019 to 6.5 million in 2024 (a drop of 35%). In fact, the party lost as many votes as the Democratic Alliance received in total (3.5 million).
Did these voters abandon the ANC because its transformation policies were not radical enough? Hardly. The party promised voters lots of free stuff and continuity of “transformation” under the banner of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).
It promised free land through the mechanism of expropriation without compensation. Having put fully half the population, around 28 million people, on welfare, it promised to increase that number further by introducing a basic income grant. It doubled down on race-based legislation in employment and procurement.
Exorbitant
Just two weeks before the election, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the National Health Insurance Bill into law, which promises free healthcare to everyone at an unknown – but exorbitant – cost and threatens to wipe out the private medical sector in South Africa.
Perhaps these measures were not radical enough. But voters had a more radical political alternative readily available: the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) offer the NDR on steroids. More indigenisation, more welfare, more race-based policies, a more interventionist state, and a much more aggressive weakening of property rights by not only nationalising all the land in South Africa, but also the banks and mines.
If voters wanted more transformation than the ANC was offering they would have flocked to the EFF. But they didn’t: the number of votes for the EFF votes dropped instead of going up. It declined by almost a fifth, from 1.9 million in 2019 to 1.5 million in 2024, a reduction of 18%.
In short, voters punished both of the parties most obviously offering radical “transformation” policy agendas at the polls.
That brings us to uMkhonto weSizwe (MK). The party achieved a stunning success by obtaining 14.6% of the vote just six months after its founding. Was this because voters shifted to MK in the expectation of more ANC-type transformation than the ANC was delivering? That is unlikely. The full MK manifesto was published just a couple of months before the election and few voters will have read it.
Disgruntled ANC voters
But the shift to MK, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), does show that there was a large number of disgruntled ANC voters who were just waiting for a better alternative to become available to shift their votes – something which polling had already confirmed well in advance of the election.
Those who voted for MK were in the main inspired by the formidable charisma of former President Jacob Zuma, who enjoys enormous popularity in KZN especially. His message of resentment towards the ANC and its current leadership fell on fertile ground. His promise to stand up for those who felt abandoned by the ANC held great appeal and allowed him to achieve a remarkable performance with MK. Though his message was associated with the “radical economic transformation” tagline, it is trust in the messenger – Mr Zuma – that motivated voters to switch, rather than the appeal of the message.
The large shift in voter numbers away from the ANC and the EFF does show that the 2024 election was a vote for change, not continuity. It was indeed a vote for transformation – but not the kind that Thuli Madonsela means.
The decades-old “transformation” policies of the ANC have delivered record-low growth and record-high unemployment. Pursuing more of the same policies would produce more of the same disappointing outcomes – which is not what voters want, as opinion surveys have also consistently shown.
Higher economic growth
Instead, the kind of transformation that voters want is one that can only be delivered through higher economic growth, the only mechanism that can bring down unemployment and raise incomes. It cannot be achieved with the kinds of policies that Ms Madonsela, the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the EFF advocate for.
Growth can easily be achieved, as examples from across the world show.
Producing economic growth requires prioritising it. It means elevating growth above other policy goals. It means taking the brakes off the economy, freeing it by removing obstacles to growth. Growth barriers include policies such as weakening property rights through EWC, hostility towards investors through restrictive race-based labour legislation, excessive state involvement in the economy, and the politicisation of the public service under the guise of cadre deployment. These brakes on growth need to be removed.
We at the IRR have been consistent in advocating for the policy shifts that can produce growth. Most recently, we have started publishing a series of “Blueprint for Growth” policy papers that explain in detail just how to do it. These are all available in the publications section of our website and are still being added to. A good starting point is The IRR’s Blueprint for Growth 1: Arming SA’s pro-growth forces.
The papers describe in detail the only way to transform South Africa’s society from its current pyramid structure, dominated as it is by a small, wealthy elite and a vast underprivileged population with few prospects for advancement, to a diamond structure with a large middle class. This is an objective on which we agree with Ms Madonsela. But we differ in the means to achieving it: the evidence shows it can only be done through free markets, not socialist policies like those espoused by the SACP and EFF.
[Image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]
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