At first glance South Africa’s politics don’t really look that interesting.
A country with a racially segregated past elects a radical far-left[1] party (the ANC) to enact radical economic policies which aim to redistribute the wealth of the former elite to the “masses”: a neat and clichéd story.
The truth, however, is far more fascinating.
As the results of polling by the IRR, and of a variety of other reputable polls, have shown time and time again, South Africans are not the simple clichés they can be made out to be, but rather have much more nuanced views.
Whilst the ANC remains the country’s largest political party and definitely has radical policies: expropriation of property without compensation, racial and gender demographic targets for the whole economy, etc, its followers seem to support the party despite its radical policies for redistribution rather than because of them.
The IRR’s 2025 polling report found that on a variety of ANC policies, ANC supporters were opposed to many of the ANC’s signature policies. On the question of merit versus racial demographic representation, only 27% agreed with the statements endorsing racial demographic focus, whilst 73% supported merit. On the Expropriation Act, only 18% of ANC supporters expressed support for the law. It’s also worth noting, as many commentators pointed out, that just before the 2024 election, when the ANC signed the NHI bill into law, its support as measured by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) tracking poll took a significant knock.
In view of this, the real mystery of South African politics is why most South Africans continue to vote for a party whose solutions to their problems are not popular?
One can come up with many reasons, from racial identity politics to liberation loyalty to genuine ANC successes in service delivery (which did happen from 1994 to 2007). However, I would venture that another reason could be that the ANC is very good at planting itself at the centre of South African politics, and convincing people both in South Africa and abroad that it is actually a moderate centre-left party with some radical elements.
“Social democrats”
As Secretary General Fikile Mbalula said in a tweet in August last year, “We are social democrats.” Prior to this, whilst defending the ANC’s decision to join the GNU he said, “The ideology of the ANC must not be distorted to equate the ANC to a black political party. We are not Azapo, we are not the PAC.
“In our ranks, we’ve got capitalists. We live in a capitalist society that we seek to transform. The measures we put in place to transform the economy and bring about equitability in society is an idea the ANC is pursuing. You can characterise that as social democracy.”
“The ANC is not communist, that’s why there is a Communist Party that we are in alliance with. We don’t pronounce socialism.”
“If you are a communist and pursue a socialist, classless agenda, you belong in the Communist Party. But if you are a democrat, you belong in the ANC. That’s who we are.”
The image the ANC tries to project is one of being a sensible bridge to a better future, a party which, whilst taking ideas from the far-left, is not as radical, and stands against the reactionaries in the DA, IFP and FF+.
Some interrogation of the reality, as expressed in policies, appointments of SACP members to senior positions, and the ANC’s continuing commitment to the NDR quickly make clear that this soft image is nothing more than a marketing tactic.
Still, it seems to have worked to some degree. Until recently, many South Africans seemed to accept the ANC as the centre of gravity in our politics.
With the ANC as the false claimant to the centre-left space in our politics, it would seem that there exists a chance for another party to fill that space.
The obvious first contender for that space, one might think, could be the DA, which according to some in the party is a centre-to-centre-left party. The obvious problem here is the “according to some” part.
Diverse party
The DA is truly a diverse party representing millions of South Africans from a variety of situations and identities. The party includes people from left-wing environmentalists, poverty-stricken shack dwellers, super-fans of Trump, Christian conservatives, pious Muslims and apolitical middle class insurance salesmen. Everything from woke progressive types to grumpy right-wingers.
Now all large political parties have diverse support bases, but the DA at times really struggles to hold together many of its adherents, which is why on issues like Israel-Palestine, or abortion, or environmental regulations, the party is often somewhat muted in how it discusses these issues, fearing that a full-on debate would break the party in two.
It is both a centre-left and centre-right party in one, and in a different political context, say that of a country like the Netherlands or the UK, the DA would be multiple parties. The main things holding the party together are shared support for the Constitution and opposition to the ANC.
In this sense, the DA might even benefit from being a real centre-left party, as it would be able to shed some of its incoherence and adopt a clearer identity for voters.
Many on the left would scoff at the idea of the DA being anything other than a right-wing party, and might claim that the true centre-left parties are the UDM, GOOD, Rise Mzansi or Build One South Africa (with Mmusi Maimane).
The absence of a real centre-left party is probably why so many of South Africa’s new parties since 1994 have tried to claim the centre-left space. Most notably, the UDM, Rise Mzansi, Good and even ActionSA. (Remember that Herman Mashaba’s original reason for leaving the DA was that “right-wing elements” had taken over the party.)
Alliance with the ANC
All these parties began with a similar story, about how there needed to be some other option besides the ANC and DA, which would not be as “right-wing” as the DA, but not as radical and corrupt as the ANC. And yet in every case, these parties turned from trying to unseat the ANC into parties which seem most focused on destroying the DA, with every one of these parties at some point choosing an alliance with the ANC over one with the DA.
But it goes further than that. These parties have all at some point adopted ANC radical policies as their own, often making themselves indistinguishable from the ANC in a practical sense. This is perhaps least true of ActionSA, but generally speaking, South Africa’s more promising new parties tend to fall into the trap of supporting policies like BEE and Expropriation Without Compensation.
Over time their rhetoric becomes much sharper and more pointedly directed at the DA than at the ANC, and before you know it, even parties like ActionSA, which sought to define themselves as being anti-ANC, are in coalition governments with the ANC.
This leaves a true centre-left alternative space in our politics empty, as these parties eventually end up selling a vision of South Africa which is fundamentally no different from that which the ANC proposes.
Why does this keep happening?
I’m not entirely sure, I suspect it has something to do with the ANC’s dominance of much of the discussion in the country, its influence over media commentators, academics and simply its tactical skill at capturing the left-wing space in our politics. I am sure Hermann Mashaba would blame DA “arrogance”. It might also simply be because defeating the ANC until 2024 seemed like such a daunting task, and taking the DA’s place seemed easier.
The problem however of not having a sane, credible centre-left party, which is non-racial, and doesn’t want to dilute our constitutional rights is that there are many voters in SA who are not really served by a sane political party. This will make it more difficult to form a stable coalition government to unseat the ANC.
Locked out
Even if the DA has an amazing election in 2029 and gets 40% of the vote, it could easily find itself locked out of national government. If there were some sort of reliable but distinct party to the left of the DA, this would free the DA to be more focused on a unique centre-right vison, while the new party could win over centre-left voters.
These two parties, if they felt comfortable that neither would hand power over to the ANC and its fellow-travellers, could compete and cooperate to form the core of a new centrist political dynamic, one which could begin to set South Africa on a path to success.
As a centre-right kinda guy myself, I feel this is a project that I can do naught to advance other than to suggest it. Still, I hope that centre-left South Africans exist somewhere out there, who will take up the task.
[Image: By Holly Wasserfall – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55550491]
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[1] I will be using the terms, left and right through this whole piece. These terms are fairly contested and messy, and there is much debate about what left and right mean. Generally when I say left i mean, state directed economics, socially “progressive” views and generous welfare spending. When i say right i mean free market economics, socially “traditional” views and more fiscal conservatism. Neither of these are hard and fast descriptions and almost all parties contain at least some ideas from left and right.