Alec Hogg (00:01) Well, for some years I've wanted Tony Leon's quality writing on BizNews. And yesterday it finally happened, and we could not have timed it better: on the day that South Africa went to vote, and on a day when the former DA leader, leader of the opposition, ambassador to Argentina, author and columnist will no doubt be looking back on 1994 and where he was back then. We'll talk about that in a moment.

But in his debut column on BizNews, which was published yesterday, Tony argued that counting is the easy part, but even a humbled ANC is going to hold the coalition cards. Let's start there, Tony. I really want to get some insight from you on how things have developed from where you were, what the young Tony Leon in 1994 would have been thinking about all of this. But let's start there, with the figures that you've seen so far.

The ANC has certainly been humbled, down to 32% as we see it, but is it still holding all the cards?

Tony Leon (01:07) Well, look, it never held all the cards, because whatever move it makes, and we can discuss what moves it has, is really going to come at some cost. So if, for example, it ices the DA out of metro mayoralties in the places where the DA has got the most votes, which is likely to be, as I suggested, Joburg. Don't know about Tshwane, certainly Port Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela Bay.

And of course Cape Town, where the DA again won with more than 55% of the vote. So if the ANC decides it doesn't want to deal with the DA, then that's going to have consequences for the ANC. If it brings in the EFF, MK, and we can talk about ActionSA in a moment, then that's, I think, going to be very negative for the ANC going forward.

And of course, as I mentioned, and as you would know, Alec, and your listeners and viewers will be sensitive to this, it'll be catastrophic if the DA either was ejected or as a result chose to leave the GNU nationally, because of what that will do to our currency and to our bond market situation. So it's not that they have, you know, endless options. Every option comes at some cost.

What did surprise me, though, in the results from yesterday, although I suggested the ANC would be humbled and would lose a lot of its support, is just how catastrophic for the ANC the across-the-board losses have been. So it's not just that the DA improved its township vote, it maximised its suburban fortresses across all cities. It's that wherever the ANC had any...

Put another way, talking about the old days, it's like the old United Party, which was once the governing party of South Africa until 1948, the dominant party. And then it started losing left, right and centre. And what happened to the ANC yesterday was its losses were left, right and centre, literally. So let's take some less-known places. Go to the Eastern Cape. Now that is an absolute ANC fortress. If you look at those results...

Tony Leon (03:22) The DA did very well in PE, or Nelson Mandela Bay, but the ANC did catastrophically badly in places like East London, which was an absolute ANC fortress, where it was shedding votes all over the place to the South African Communist Party, to the UDM particularly. And it seemed as though voters, and voters are much more intelligent than we think they are, wanted to punish the ANC and were going for the party that they thought could deliver the lashes to the ANC. And that's had implications all over the place. And I think we'll see that further when the final results are known tonight.

Alec Hogg (04:03) So what would you say to a young Tony Leon if you got into a time machine and said: well, you know, we got like 1% of the vote back in '94, hang in there, because you're going to see 2026?

Tony Leon (04:21) Yeah, in fact I had a very warm message from the current leader of the DA, Geordin Hill-Lewis, exactly on that point, the day before the polls [ASR: "David Ford polls"; reading uncertain]. But in 1994, look, the DP, which I was not the leader of during the election year, was absolutely fighting for its existence. So I had the paradoxical situation, because I was the outgoing member of parliament for Houghton, of going to my polling station at Houghton Primary and seeing this vast queue of voters, white and black, and realising that most whites would vote for the National Party, which is exactly what happened, and overwhelmingly blacks would vote for the ANC, and there were very few places in the margins. A friend of mine quoted what Scott Joplin [attribution unverified] said on playing the piano, and that was that you can play on the white keys or the black keys, but you can't play on the cracks in between. And literally the DP was in the cracks in between.

But of course it evolved, and over the next 12 years when I was the leader, it certainly grew. So it started with seven MPs; when I left it had 50. And then of course it grew again and more. And I think the remarkable feature of the Democratic Alliance today is that, as you see its traditional voter base, the whites, shrinking and shrinking, the DA footprint actually expands.

So I've been given some private projections, not polling, the polls have happened, which suggest that the DA could get 26% of the vote nationally and the ANC would get 31%. So however much I thought, in my 1994 iteration, age 37, when the DP was on the eve of bankruptcy, that the fight was worth taking and making, as we did in the next parliament, I never thought that there would be a day, which clearly is happening today, where the gap between the ANC and the DA would be about 5% on the national board. So I think that is an extraordinary achievement. And it's been done, if you look at some of the township results, by going from an absolute toehold...

Tony Leon (06:44) ...to a footprint. So for example, Alec, if you look at some of the results coming out of Khayelitsha and Gugulethu in Cape Town, the DA is getting, you know, 12, 15, sometimes 17% in township wards. Now, I live in a suburb, and a friend of mine rather waspishly said the DA got 90% last night in Constantia, where I live. He said, so 90% of Constantians want to vote for higher rates and more densification. But of course, what they're voting for in Constantia is actually because the quality of life here is very good. And I think 90% of suburban residents realise there's a cost to pay, and the cost is you're going to have to do quite a lot of development in township areas. It can't all just be in the leafy suburbs. And the fact that that is now, after many years, being rewarded in townships, when it hadn't been previously, I think does give a very positive prospect for the party going forward. That's how I see things now. And the same is replicating itself in Joburg and Bloemfontein and elsewhere.

Alec Hogg (07:56) Let's dwell on Joburg for a little while. Where are we sitting at the moment? Helen Zille's got 41%, ANC at 17, ActionSA 15 and the EFF six. How are you seeing those coalition negotiations going? Because it doesn't look like she's going to get to 50, and it does look like Herman Mashaba's got a strong hand there.

Tony Leon (08:21) So yeah, I think that's going to be very close to the final result, Alec. I think the DA will get 38 to 40 in Joburg, and the ANC will do catastrophically badly. I mean, it's just losing hand over fist in all the townships, let alone the suburbs. And as you say, there's an interesting feature of the ActionSA vote. It's doing very well in townships, but it's surrendered the very significant gains it made five years ago in the suburbs. So it's almost done a switcheroo, as they say in America.

And of course there are a number of reasons, apart from the fact that Herman Mashaba had, you know, high name recognition. ActionSA ran a very hostile campaign towards foreigners, xenophobia. I mean, they were absolutely explicit about it. The DA didn't, and the ANC didn't, nor did the EFF, I have to say.

And they ran a very anti-DA campaign, because there's a lot of unfinished enmity between the two. So I don't see, just on the top of it... I mean, the ANC will no doubt have to make a lot of concessions to have any coalition that it's part of. But it would have to make a huge concession on one of its remaining pillars of principle, which is pan-Africanism, if it's going to do business with Mashaba.

And then of course the other part of that equation is something that's quite interesting. If you add up the ANC, EFF and MK votes, the totality of them as we see them being projected, that's less than 50% nationally. So here, of course, Herman Mashaba and ActionSA are significant, but they're significant in Joburg and they're significant in Pretoria, and to a lesser extent in Ekurhuleni, where I think the DA is outperforming other parties, but they're not significant anywhere else in the country to speak of.

So if I were, and I certainly am not, and I'm not looking to go back into the negotiations process I did two years ago, if I was sitting in anyone's position, whether it was ANC, EFF, DA...

Tony Leon (10:39) ...or ActionSA, I would say, apart from delivering on election promises if you get into power in these cities, politically the calculation they need to make is: where do we want to be in two years' time for the national election? Whatever we do in the next few days and weeks might be tactically smart, but it could be strategically very negative in terms of what you want to do in two years' time.

Alec Hogg (10:54) Right.

Tony Leon (11:08) So in other words, if I was directing political operations for any major party, I would look at the 2029 baseline and work backwards from that. In other words, what am I going to do in the next few weeks to form coalition governments that's going to impact positively or negatively on where the party will be in two years' time? That's an obvious strategic question that I can pose. I don't have the answer, because it's quite complicated.

Alec Hogg (11:34) Do you know Nasiphi Moya, the mayoral candidate for ActionSA in Tshwane?

Tony Leon (11:37) No, I've never met her. I don't know her, but she seems to be running up some quite impressive totals. I don't know what the final situation will be there.

Alec Hogg (11:48) Yeah, because she is ex-DA. So she went from the DA to ActionSA and is leading the pack in Tshwane.

Tony Leon (11:55) Yeah, well, look, most of the ActionSA leadership in Parliament and in Gauteng is actually ex-DA. It's a bit, once again, like the EFF and MK. They are all ex-ANC, very prominently ex-ANC. And there's quite a lot of bad blood between MK and the ANC, and there's quite a lot of bad blood between the DA and ActionSA.

Alec Hogg (12:20) Does that make it difficult, then, to get around a table and do a deal?

Tony Leon (12:25) Well, on the face of it, yes. But, as I mentioned scribbling for you yesterday, you can always be surprised on the upside. I mean, I guess it's going to ask questions of every party. So for the ANC, they've got to actually answer a question that perhaps has been too long in the asking: what sort of party are we? Who are we? What are we trying to achieve, apart from power and patronage?

And for ActionSA, they've got to say: does my hatred or dislike of Helen Zille, which has been very well ventilated in this election, preclude me from doing what overwhelmingly my own supporters want me to do? And I mention that because we have the polling, and overwhelmingly ActionSA voters and DA voters want those two parties to coalesce with each other.

So you can ignore the voters' wishes, but that comes with a cost attached to it. Or you can say, well, I've just got to park my resentment and listen to my supporters. I don't know the answer to those questions, but I think that is the question that needs to be asked, or answered, should I say.

Alec Hogg (13:37) Tony, what's happened in Tshwane to Cilliers Brink? He was polling well; it was being suggested he could even get close to 50%, and together with the Freedom Front, over 50%. But so far, with a quarter of the votes counted, so things could change, he's way behind the curve.

Tony Leon (14:01) Yes, look, I don't know where the totals are coming from. You could well be correct. That could be the final projection. And I don't know whether that's representative. I mean, no one has yet made a call, as Wayne Sussman, who's very competent on elections, did on eNCA this morning, where there's an outright majority for the DA in Cape Town and between 40 and 45% for the DA in Nelson Mandela Bay. I haven't seen a call or a projection made in Pretoria, or Tshwane.

So maybe that's the direction of travel. I simply don't know where those results are coming from. But clearly the incumbent mayor, despite all that went on, you know, the cholera outbreak and all the other problems, and a lot of dodgy officials being arrested, clearly projected very well for a lot of voters. And I think that is for them the power of incumbency. To quote Mr Ramaphosa, she had a good story to tell.

Now, the power of incumbency was a disaster for the ANC, for example in Joburg, because people didn't have water coming out of their taps, and they didn't have reliable electricity, and they had uncollected garbage. I mean, you didn't want to be an incumbent in Joburg yesterday. And I haven't been to Pretoria for a while. Clearly the situation was not nearly as chronic in Tshwane.

Alec Hogg (15:29) So if we step back a little from your column this week, where it looked like the obvious thing is for the ANC and the DA to become partners, in the same way that they are in the Government of National Unity: maybe now, with these results as they're coming through, at least for Gauteng, there could be an alternative there, with the DA and ActionSA ruling the roost.

Tony Leon (15:54) Yes, clearly, and I think arithmetically, that is entirely possible. But let's just go back to what you said about Pretoria. I mean, the prize in this election, because it's the economic prize and every other prize, is Joburg. I don't want to diminish Pretoria and Ekurhuleni, but Joburg is much more important than any other metro in this country, actually, because of its population, because of its economic clout and because of the huge destruction that's been done to it.

I think the tussle will be, even if they do come to an arrangement and they can overcome all the obstacles: who gets Pretoria and who gets Joburg? And obviously, for all the reasons I mentioned, Joburg is prize number one. So I think that can prove interesting.

As you know from the numbers that you just quoted, the DA is going to massively outperform, by a factor of two to one, both the ANC and ActionSA in Joburg. I mean, as things stand, it's 40% and the others are 19, 18%. There's a huge gap. I don't know the final thing in Pretoria, but even if ActionSA keeps up its impressive total so far, the gap won't be nearly as wide. And secondly, if ActionSA is number one in Pretoria, the DA is definitely number one in Joburg.

So if you use the Ramaphosa formula from two years ago, which the ANC played to great effect, the party with the largest vote gets the presidency. If I was the DA, or anyone else, I would use exactly that formula in these coalition negotiations. He or she who gets the most votes must have the first crack at forming the government and has the inside track to become the mayor. That's what the total shows us.

So if you use that, which was used to form the national GNU two years ago, it's pretty obvious the DA should on any basis get Joburg. And we can see what the final numbers are in Tshwane, whether it's ActionSA or the DA. But the fascinating thing is that it seems as though in both those places, the one racing certainty is it will not be the ANC...

Tony Leon (18:18) ...which is extraordinary when you actually think about it, Alec. I mean, let's go back, as you did in my time capsule, to 1994. The ANC being routed in townships on the East Rand and in Soweto and Mamelodi is just extraordinary.

Alec Hogg (18:38) Are you reassessing ActionSA now, given the good performance that we've seen coming from Mashaba's lot? He did tell me he'd done a lot of work. He said he's been at it for two years, you know, stomping along, knocking on doors, kissing babies, all the traditional politician stuff, and it does seem to have paid off.

Tony Leon (18:58) Well, I think it's paid off handsomely for ActionSA in Gauteng. But clearly, as a national party, if you look at the national scoreboard, ActionSA is a very localised phenomenon. Gauteng is obviously hugely important, so I'm not minimising that, and I'm not taking anything away from their achievements in Joburg and Pretoria. But if you look at the national board, the party is number six or seven. I mean, first is the ANC, just ahead of the DA, and then a big drop. I think there's really a big drop between 26 or 27, or whatever the DA is going to get, right down to the teens, where you meet MK, and then you meet the EFF, and then there are a whole lot of others, including ActionSA, thereafter. ActionSA nationally is a single-digit party, and that's not going to change. It might get 5% nationally; it maybe got two and a half last time. So that's, of course, growth from a low base. But it doesn't give you a national footprint in the way that the big three or four parties have.

Alec Hogg (20:07) Is it because voters are looking for an alternative? Is that what we read from this?

Tony Leon (20:13) Yeah, I think they are. What I think they're very vigorously interrogating is: who is going to be my best shot against the ANC? I mean, the ANC is like a... I don't want to degrade them further than the voters did yesterday, but it's like a huge carcass. Everyone's grabbing it, like in the game reserve: all the lions come, and the hyenas and leopards, and they grab a chunk of the carcass. Now, the ANC is obviously still alive, but it must be electorally on a kind of life-support basis.

And this is so because of their huge losses yesterday, much bigger than any other party's. In fact there were no other big losses... I think Inkatha [IFP] did poorly. We haven't looked at that. My information from KZN is of a very unimpressive Inkatha performance, and a little subpar for the count we see today, but let's see the results. And very good for the DA, with big suburban totals and winning some township wards, actually. But we don't know what the final situation there is.

But if you just go to the ANC, which is a huge party, now more diminished: just think, Alec, of the thousands, there will be thousands, of ANC councillors and support staff who are going to actually be out of work. And a lot of those folk will battle to find employment. And you wonder what that's going to do to the dynamics within the ANC over the next year as they go about choosing a new leader. It could be very, very ugly.

Alec Hogg (22:01) And the dynamics for the GNU?

Tony Leon (22:04) That's very interesting. Look, clearly what's decided locally is going to impact nationally. Now, this is not the party view, which I don't have to articulate any more, but I'm absolutely sure, and they'd be mad if they didn't do it, the DA will go to the ANC and anyone else and say: look, we got the most votes in every metro, which I think is actually going to be the result. Maybe not Pretoria, but let's see.

But certainly, if we put that to one side, every other major metro, maybe Bloemfontein as well, I think they're going to get the most votes. I don't know about Durban, but they'll do very well there. And they're going to go and say, well, they should say, and I think they will say it: OK, using the formula you, the ANC, used against us two years ago, we are entitled to the mayoralty in the places where we got the most votes.

Now, the ANC can say, you know, what worked for us two years ago doesn't work for you two years later. And then what's the DA going to do? The DA can say, well, you've now reneged on both the spirit, in fact the letter, of the Statement of Intent that you used two years ago, and you're not applying it now, and therefore we can no longer be part of the national GNU. That's a big step to take. It might, incidentally, backfire on the DA, or it might backfire on the ANC. But you know, it's a game of poker, or chicken, I don't know which it is. You've got to make a move at some point.

Or the ANC, which actually controls the GNU, could say: well, OK, we're going into business with ActionSA, we're going into business with the EFF, we're going into business with MK, we're going to ignore all the voters' interests, and we're going to apply that nationally as well. So in other words, I think the GNU is dynamic. I don't think it's just a stasis, that it's erected on concrete from two years ago. So I think it will have an effect on the GNU going forward, as I see it. But it's early days. Let's see.

Alec Hogg (24:20) But you negotiated that agreement...

Tony Leon (24:24) Well, as one of them, I did.

Alec Hogg (24:25) At the time the ANC was at 40. Now they look like they're going to be just above 30. You have to think that if the other parties ganged up and said, OK, no more of this, because the electorate has told us the ANC's a 30% party, let's collapse the government. Is that possible?

Tony Leon (24:45) It is possible. Look, I suspect it won't happen, because what are you going to put in its place? I think most parties will be minded to wait until the next national election. It's only two years away. But look, in a very febrile atmosphere, Alec, anything is possible. And I think there is going to be a lot of dynamism in the political space that we haven't seen for a long time.

Look, at the end of the day, and I'm sure this is the viewpoint of Helen Zille that she articulated so well in Joburg, you've got to remember what you're there for. You're not there to play political musical chairs. You're there to actually deliver basic services, to stamp out corruption, and to get an honest administration that's staffed by competent people. That's what it really needs to be about.

And I think part of the revulsion, and it is a sense of revulsion, that voters displayed yesterday towards primarily, overwhelmingly, the ANC, was based on the fact that they were far more interested in that game of musical chairs, who's going to be the mayor, who's going to get this portfolio, and completely neglected the voters' interests. So actually there's a lesson in that, and it's not confined to the ANC. If other parties start playing that game, they also in turn will be punished, as we know.

Alec Hogg (26:12) You finished your column yesterday by saying, well, here's hoping. In other words, looking for some optimism. Is there much optimism in what you've seen in the results?

Tony Leon (26:24) Yeah, I'm very optimistic, because I think we're in a change. We saw the change being signalled two years ago, when the ANC went down to 40%. Now they're, as you point out, Alec, hovering at 30% at best. This might be catastrophic for them, but it's great for the democratic health of the country, provided, to go back to my previous point, people don't forget why voters voted yesterday. They didn't vote for Herman Mashaba or Helen Zille or the ANC's unknown candidates simply to acquire power. They voted purposefully to get things done. So that's going to be the real order of business, if you want to be optimistic beyond the immediate results headline.

Alec Hogg (27:18) And it tends to suggest as well that our voting public are more mature than they had been given credit for.

Tony Leon (27:27) I completely agree. You know, I was very struck by the talk of blue waves, or what happened in the United States, and we can interrogate that on another occasion. But Trump got absolutely hammered, and the Republicans as a result, because he forgot what the voters put him in office for. They wanted lower prices and they wanted an end to the forever wars. He gave them higher prices and an unasked-for, unexplained war in the Middle East. Never mind that candidate quality played a factor, those were the... And of course he enabled corruption, and those issues were top of mind. So if you get elected, as Trump did, very historically significantly, two years ago, and then you renege on your promises, you get punished.

So we saw that in America, and America's obviously a huge middle-class country with high levels of education, so the kickback happens quickly. In South Africa it takes longer, but it's also a kickback against the very things that cause people distress in their daily lives, and that is largely a factor of ANC administrations. And clearly in Cape Town, where the DA, extraordinarily, is now going to have been in power with more than 50% of the vote for 25 years at the end of this mayoral term, it gets rewarded for, you know, providing good services.

Alec Hogg (28:56) Before we go, two parties we haven't mentioned: the Freedom Front and the Patriotic Alliance, both of whom were quite optimistic going into this election. Have they reason to be satisfied?

Tony Leon (29:09) No, I don't believe so. Looking at some of those results in the Joburg coloured areas and certainly in the Cape Town metro areas, and the rural areas are somewhat different, the PA got a very modest result. It wasn't terrible, but it was nothing to write home about. The Freedom Front increased its vote somewhat, but it's by no means the breakthrough it had, for example, in 2019 in the general election, where it really added 400,000 new or ex-DA votes to its column. That didn't seem to happen.

I think we've got to wait a bit, because those results are on the margins in both cases. But the PA, in rural areas, they do well. I mean, they did well in the Oudtshoorn area, Prince Albert, in, you know, the Northern Cape [see flag]. But that's not where most people live and vote. We are a 65% urbanised country, Alec. And if you can't make breakthroughs in the cities, well, you're not going to have too much power nationally or even locally.

Alec Hogg (30:20) Fascinating insights from our ultimate insider, Tony Leon, who was the longest-serving leader of the opposition here in South Africa, and we're proud to have his column on BizNews. Thank you, Tony.

Tony Leon (30:33) Thank you. Great to be with you. Thanks, Alec. Really appreciate it.

Alec Hogg (30:35) Look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks' time. And we have to put a rider in here that only about a quarter of the votes are in, so things can change, but it has certainly given us a very good direction of progress. And thanks again for sticking your neck out without having all the numbers quite yet. Tony Leon is a new columnist on BizNews, and I'm Alec Hogg with your Business Edge.

BN Edge | Tony Leon on the coalition fight for Joburg, Tshwane and the GNU