Most people agree that ANC voters effectively control SA’s future.
It is comforting to be reminded that citizens are not powerless; they are de facto in charge. That same thought is equally terrifying. For many, a pressing question remains: “Why the hell do people continue to vote for the ANC?!”
Here is a range of opinions from left, right and centre.
“Care about people like me”
“People don’t vote for policy. Nor do they necessarily vote for ideology or messaging,” says Hermann Pretorius on the podcast of the Centre for Risk Analysis.
In the most insightful review of SA voting patterns I have seen, Pretorius expounded on IRR polling results over the past six years.
“They vote based on emotional valence or what I call CAPLM: they vote for parties who demonstrate that they ‘care about people like me’.”
He then explains that the ANC has shown distinctive stickiness among female supporters. It sheds light on the party’s narrow but steady statistical advantage over time.
“This is not because of identity politics, purely split along strict gender lines. South Africans have shown remarkable pragmatism in their voting patterns. Something more nuanced is going on here.”
While many parties have an even gender split, some parties like MK, IFP and FF+ have a slight male bias and the ANC a slight female bias.
Pretorius explains that female voters tend to respond to issues and messages that affect the household: housing, healthcare, and service delivery in the form of water and electricity. Male voters tend to be slightly more interested in job creation, corruption, and illegal immigration.
Combined with the fact that female voters tend to be more loyal, the ANC has managed to make the margin work hard for them. Other parties would do well to take this into consideration.
“It is not simply putting more women on election posters.”
Read Pretorius’s full report here.
ANC voters also have traditionally voted for the party of liberation – the party that freed them from Apartheid. Predictably, the White Cross Project will drive some parts of the population back into the laager.
To many, it is a symbolic prism, purposefully wedging the colours of the rainbow apart. Lex Libertas planted 3,000 white crosses at the Washington Monument, ostensibly to attract attention to farm murders, but so close to election time, it has become propaganda gold.
Ruling party stalwarts see this gesture as provocative, anti-democratic, and treasonous even. Former president Thabo Mbeki released a monograph voicing concerns about the message it sends.
While not many truly believe a small group of Voortrekker lookalikes want to take the whole country back to Apartheid, the display has high emotional valence. Voters will be doing the math, deciding which political grouping will be most likely to look out for their own interests.
From more liberal and centrist corners, association with the White Cross Project has drawn criticism for being divisive activism, rather than a considered policy position. Its leaders have been called ‘AfriMAGA’ or ‘Boere MAGA’, not intended as a compliment, but a rebuke for backward thinking and an unsophisticated approach to a situation requiring more elegance and political maturity.
Math does not add up
Podcaster Hügo Krüger has done a different type of maths by counting the crosses. He says Lex Libertas’s math does not add up. He says that if one uses the death of others to score political points, one should show respect to the dead by doing your arithmetic properly.
Krüger analysed the numbers released by Ernst Roets, compared them to official Stats SA figures and highlighted the under- and overcounting in the ‘3,000’ figure.
He concluded that there was no basis for anyone calling anything a genocide, or claiming that farm dwellers, white or black, were particularly targeted.
Moreover, if one does the maths properly, it could show that the death rate on farms is lower than the national average.
“Ernst Roets’s math does not add up for me”, says Krüger.
The patriarchy
“I am for the patriarchy. It is in the Bible.”
One would expect this statement to come from one of the bearded cross planters or perhaps a busty, blonde trad wife on an American reality show. Not so; it is the sentiment of June Hlongwane, a young black conservative South African podcaster, with a penchant for quoting Thomas Sowell.
Speaking about the upcoming election, she reminded listeners that voting for a political party is not a marriage. Politicians are not your family, your football team or your heroes. Support can be given and withdrawn.
“There are other choices than the ANC,” she said, adding that democracy works when citizens question their leaders’ performance and refuse to give any political party permanent loyalty.
South Africa’s political landscape is changing. The question is whether voters are ready to change with it.
Podcast Report street survey:
By all accounts, pundits are predicting a major election defeat for the ANC. A Rubicon will be crossed; the times they are changing.
More than one in my social circle has indicated that they will not vote DA this time, but are moving towards the FF+. They cite preference for the latter’s election manifesto. When asked to name the main differences between the two, they could not cite one single thing from either party’s manifesto.
On the ground, the ANC is going door to door in townships across the country, sharing testimonies of people who thank the ANC for bringing them freedom and services.
“Aluta continua!” says an ANC supporter on Facebook.
A viral TikTok video shows an ANC campaigner being chased away by a shack dweller. “Leave us alone!”, the lady shouts. Phrased slightly differently in the comments, someone said: “Voetsak ANC!”
The odds are 50/50 at this stage for an ANC majority. I went to register to vote at my local church. I know where I will make my cross. Plus, I now have a greater understanding of why others might make a different choice. See you at the polls!
Viva!
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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