Asked for the ANC's best-case scenario, William Saunderson-Meyer couldn't find one, only least-worst options for a party he said may be in terminal decline. A week before the local government elections, the Jaundiced Eye columnist told Alec Hogg why the neatest deal on paper, an ANC-DA partnership that most voters of both parties say they would accept, may be the one the ANC can't bring itself to sign. He likened ANC power-broking to feudal barons around a king, explained why the feud with MK runs deeper than any rivalry with the DA, and argued MK was likelier to win eThekwini outright than the DA was to take Joburg alone. He also weighed whether Joburg's polls are underselling the DA, whether Tshwane's water crisis will cost ActionSA, why spoiling a ballot this time would be "a complete sacrilege", and why Gayton McKenzie's charm keeps working in the Western Cape..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:03)Seven days to go. That's until the local government election. The ANC had 62% of the vote when Cyril Ramaphosa took over. Now it has 32%. That's at least according to one poll. Others say even lower. The DA reckons, by its numbers, it's a dead heat between itself and the ANC. And in the six big metros, how many does the ANC lead in? None.William Saunderson-Meyer has done the coalition arithmetic metro by metro. He wrote about it in his Jaundiced Eye column this week. The tidy answer is obvious. Why does no one in the ANC want it? William, welcome. That tidy answer, of course, is a coalition between the DA and the ANC, and it seems like that's what ANC voters want.William Saunderson-Meyer (00:56)Fascinating. I think it's The Common Sense, the Social Research Foundation poll, which found that 83% of ANC voters feel that, in a situation where their party cannot govern on its own and a governing coalition can be assembled, the DA is the preferred partner. That's an astonishing vote. And interestingly enough, on the DA side it's very high as well. I think it's 77%. Very close.So we have a situation where... do you remember, in the bad old days of apartheid, people used to vote for the old Progs or the United Party and "thank God for the Nats"? In a way we have an inversion of that. We now have ANC voters who are voting for the ANC, but "thank God for the DA". They can't bring themselves to vote for the DA, but in fact they would quite like to see the DA's influence within government.Alec Hogg (02:04)And that, I guess, would explain something that has baffled me. If you want to put a bet on who's going to win the Johannesburg mayoralty, you will get less than even money. The odds-on favourite is Helen Zille. And yet all the polls say Helen's only sitting at around 40%. So I guess what we're hearing there is that...William Saunderson-Meyer (02:22)Yes.Alec Hogg (02:32)...if Helen doesn't get above 50, which looks unlikely, but you can tell us that, then a deal would be done with the ANC.William Saunderson-Meyer (02:41)I think politics isn't logical. Politics is a very passionate and strongly felt field of human endeavour. That's one of the reasons why very logical solutions don't often come into being in politics. Without a doubt, for both the DA and the ANC, it's absolute arithmetic logic. It's the neatest, tidiest solution. It reduces the reliance on third parties, fourth parties, fifth parties, the bringing into coalitions of groups and parties which have no discernible policies except for self-aggrandisement. So logically it is the solution, but it isn't emotionally.There's a very strong feeling in the ANC that its ultimate political fortunes lie on the other side of the political spectrum.Alec Hogg (03:49)Let's just start with Joburg and unpack that for us. Is the centre of the ANC, those who don't like the EFF/MK option, now holding sway there, or will Lesufi still make the decisions?William Saunderson-Meyer (04:06)I honestly don't know. I have no idea. It's so murky, and the movement of power between the blocs is constant; it's in constant flow. I think we'll only know when they sit down on Thursday or Friday next week and look at the numbers, and then look at those numbers in terms of the party's relative strength throughout the country. Because Johannesburg doesn't exist entirely on its own. If a deal is done on a GNU-type set-up at municipal level, then it makes sense to do it as a single deal throughout the country, except of course for the wild card of eThekwini.So I actually don't know where the power sits, Alec. Lesufi is not easily discouraged. At the provincial level, when Luthuli House and Ramaphosa tried to nudge him with a clubbed stick into an agreement with the DA, he resisted and got away with it. So he's powerful. And as always, these power blocs' relative power depends on where they think the game is going and where they can get maximum advantage. It's not as if it's based on any principles, where you can say this one set of principles is holding sway over another set of principles. It doesn't work like that in the ANC.Alec Hogg (05:44)It's almost like medieval politics in Europe. Machiavellian: whatever's going to give me the most power is the way I'm going to swing.William Saunderson-Meyer (05:47)Mm-hmm.William Saunderson-Meyer (05:54)Yes, it's a lovely analogy. It's sort of feudal barons and the king. The king dispenses favour and buys his barons, and he has enough barons to fight the neighbouring kingdom. So yes, it's a shifting thing, and you need to be in a position as the ruler to dispense largesse and favours and, in South Africa's case, to dispense immunity against corruption charges, lost files and tenderpreneur opportunities.Alec Hogg (06:29)What's the mood? You've seen so many of these elections. Your column is the longest-running political column in South Africa, three decades and counting. How is the mood that you're seeing now different, perhaps?William Saunderson-Meyer (06:44)I think the mood is different. But you know, as South Africans we keep thinking this is the moment that things are going to change. For, what is it, 46 years under the National Party, we were wrong every single time. Then there came a massive change, and now we've been sitting for 32 years under the ANC thinking the moment of change is about to come.It does feel different, though. The country's in desperate straits. People use the currency as a barometer, and that's perhaps not a very good barometer at the moment because of the dollar flattering the rand. But we're in trouble. If you look at the unemployment figures, if you look at the general gestalt of the country, it's not a good moment.So there's a real need for change, but there's also intense disillusion with the whole political process in South Africa. A lot of people aren't voting. A lot of people have removed themselves entirely from the political process. I had an approach from a journalist yesterday asking me to comment on the fact that, judging by previous years' figures, there'll be at least half a million spoiled ballots, depending of course on the turnout.The journalist asked me about the fact that many people who have been interviewed said they're going to spoil their ballots, or write "none of the above" on them, which is exactly the same thing as spoiling it. And it seems to be such an indulgence. This is a moment where the vote really does matter. It is so finely balanced. One obviously can't take the DA's internal polling as gospel; they have a vested interest in portraying things as positively as possible. But whether it's a 6% difference between them and the ANC or a 2% difference, things are tightly, tightly balanced. So to refrain from voting, or to spoil your ballot, or just to be too bloody lazy to go out and vote, is a complete sacrilege in my view.Alec Hogg (09:01)And the numbers can be small if one thinks about uMngeni. It was a couple of dozen votes' difference there. That's kind of our home area, at least for part of our lives. How are you seeing that one? Chris Pappas pulling it through for the DA?William Saunderson-Meyer (09:11)Yes.William Saunderson-Meyer (09:18)I would be surprised if he didn't. Let's put it this way: everything is flowing in the DA's favour in that constituency. He's performed very well as a mayor. The ANC has plunged in popularity in KwaZulu-Natal. If there's a threat, it comes from MK, and no one really knows what MK is doing. It's sort of lurking in the bushes there, with Jacob Zuma hidden behind a screen, alive or not alive, we don't know. So a lot depends on what the MK turnout is, especially, obviously, in KwaZulu-Natal.Alec Hogg (09:58)MK is working very hard. I have that from inside MK. They are not, however, showing themselves to the media. They're hitting the good old-fashioned door-to-door, viral approach, and they have targeted uMngeni as a big win, a big area to hit. So sure, it would be strange... again, logic. But you spoke about emotions in politics. Logic says this guy's done an incredible job there as the mayor. He's stuck with being the mayor rather than going higher up in the DA. At least reward him. But emotions may change all of that. One hopes not, but who knows?William Saunderson-Meyer (10:29)Yes.William Saunderson-Meyer (10:37)Mm.William Saunderson-Meyer (10:47)KZN is a cauldron, isn't it? There's the whole thing of tribal politics. People don't like talking about tribal politics in South Africa, but it is undoubtedly a huge factor in KZN, and it's going to play out in some way. What we now have in KZN is two Zulu nationalist parties, black nationalist parties, vying with one another for the vote. And if you look at the DA vote there, the numbers for the DA haven't budged a hell of a lot since the last election.It's a Cinderella province, you know. It doesn't get a lot of publicity, but it's so important within the economy. It's the second-biggest economic area. It's where our goods enter and leave the country. And at the moment it looks more likely that MK will triumph in eThekwini on its own than that the DA could win Johannesburg on its own.Alec Hogg (11:59)That's an interesting point. When I had a look at the Social Research Foundation's latest polls, which we're publishing on BizNews today (they're on The Common Sense already), they show MK at around 40%. So very similar to where Helen Zille is in Johannesburg. Is it possible that if they come in at 40 or 42%, with the EFF pretty much nowhere in eThekwini, near Durban, the other parties will do what they did at provincial level and get together and make the DA candidate the mayor?William Saunderson-Meyer (12:36)Big move to make. If the ANC does that... in other words, you're talking now about an alliance between the DA and the ANC and the bits and bobs to keep it going. There are so many bits and bobs in that equation. You might be able to do the deal, but can you keep it? If you look at the province, that is the deal that was done at provincial level: keep MK out...Alec Hogg (12:48)And the IFP, yeah. The IFP are quite strong there too. Mm-hmm.William Saunderson-Meyer (13:06)...at all costs. And it's an ANC, DA, NFP deal. It's not even as complicated as that, but it's absolutely poised on the brink. The NFP is at court, and it's very likely that it could collapse at provincial level. So you could do it, but I don't quite know. If the ANC enters into that kind of deal in eThekwini and at all costs tries to keep MK out, it really kills off any possibility of cooperating with MK in any of the other metros.Alec Hogg (13:49)Why is there so much antagonism between the ANC and MK? As I think you've said numerous times in the past, it is an offshoot of the mother body, the mothership. And it's almost more hated than even the previously much-hated DA, as far as the ANC is concerned.William Saunderson-Meyer (14:12)What's that word in Afrikaans? Broedertwis: a hatred between brothers. It's often far more poisonous and bitter between people who were previously joined at the hip than it is between strangers. And it's very personal. The loathing of Ramaphosa, and prior to that Mbeki, is very real.And there's some justification for it, you know. Zuma was a bad boy, no doubt about that. But I don't think one can deny that the fact that they pursued him with such vigour, where they chose not to pursue so many other people for wrongdoing who were standing close to the shoulder of Ramaphosa or Mbeki, is an indication that he was a political scapegoat. And the Zulu nation is not going to forgive it. We come back to a tribal thing. There is an enormous anger and a feeling of humiliation. For the first time, there is not a Zulu standing at the door of a top job in our politics. So I think it's very difficult to get away from that hatred.Alec Hogg (15:47)Mm-hmm. And as we're both from KZN, we know that it's a real thing, the Zulu pride, most definitely, and justifiably, because of an incredibly proud history.William Saunderson-Meyer (15:56)Yes.Alec Hogg (15:57)Just moving back to Joburg. How are you reading Johannesburg at the moment? The latest poll again has the DA at 39%, the ANC at 24%, ActionSA at 10%. You wrote a bit about ActionSA, so I'd be interested to get your thoughts on that one. But how do you see the Joburg pie crumbling or holding together?William Saunderson-Meyer (16:24)I'm surprised at how low the DA is polling there. Zille's run a very, very clever campaign, lots of publicity. She's weighed in boots and all. I would have expected her to be in the mid-40s, even. It could be that she's being under-polled. There have been suggestions: Richard Wilkinson did an analysis very recently saying he thinks the DA vote is underrepresented. And that is possible. ActionSA at 10% is hardly a small party, but when your margin of error is such that many of the small parties are not even registering on your poll, it's really difficult to get a completely accurate picture. So she may be under-polling.But I think it's very disappointing for the DA that they're not in the mid-40s, that they're not even within the possibility of running a minority government. A minority administration, at least.Alec Hogg (17:36)I'd love to get your thoughts on what Jack Miller, from CapeXit, the Cape Independence Party, had to say about the DA. There's no love lost between him and the party; they would certainly like the DA to fall as much as possible in Cape Town. But he was saying they've got an incredible machine, and that machine really kicks in on election day. They get people to the polls; they go and fetch them and take them in. Is that being calculated into what we're seeing in the polling? Could we, in other words, see a surprise uplift in the actual figure?William Saunderson-Meyer (18:13)If I remember correctly, in all our previous elections the ANC vote has been higher than expected, and the DA vote has tapered off in the actual polling. So the polls have tended to underestimate the ANC and overestimate the DA. That is partly because the ANC used to kick into gear in the last fortnight or the last month. It hasn't kicked into gear this time. So I have a sense that the ANC figures are probably pretty close.Mobilisation is definitely absolutely key. If we have a low turnout, which is what usually happens in municipal elections, then turnout is absolutely critical. It could turn in Johannesburg on 50,000 votes. It really could make an enormous difference. And the DA does have a good machine, and nothing has happened yet to trip it up. I keep waiting for something to come bursting through the door like a mad rhino. You know, John Steenhuisen suddenly deciding this is the moment to accuse his fellow ministers of state looting, or the State Security Agency announcing that it has irrefutable proof of the DA colluding with the United States government. Something really dramatic. Nothing's happened. The DA has been sailing absolutely smoothly. So yes, it could very well come in higher than that. I would be surprised if it doesn't come in around 40 to 45%.Alec Hogg (20:04)Interesting point you make there, because here in Hermanus, which is supposedly a very safe seat for the DA, there's quite a campaign from AfriForum. They've put together what sounds like quite a sensationalist video, which they're launching this week, so just before the election, with a week to go, making all kinds of accusations, in the trailer anyway, against the DA in this area.William Saunderson-Meyer (20:30)Hmm.Alec Hogg (20:32)I suppose that's often used by politicians to try and stir up the emotions just before the vote comes in.William Saunderson-Meyer (20:44)Presumably... I don't know, do you have an AfriForum-type party in Hermanus aside from the Freedom Front?Alec Hogg (20:51)Just the Freedom Front.William Saunderson-Meyer (20:52)So that would be a campaign benefiting the Freedom Front, obviously. Yes, I think that as the DA becomes more successful, it becomes prone to all the temptations and shenanigans that beset any political party. Arguably it's done better at containing and preventing them than anyone else so far. There's an advantage to incumbency: you have the power of doing things and being in the public eye all the time. But there's also a cost to incumbency, and that's a kind of lethargy.Your Hermanus example is interesting in terms of Cape Town itself, and the idea that the DA might lose the city because it's poised just above 50%. Again, I don't know whether that's a reality or whether it's just the DA playing the numbers to get its vote out, saying to its voters, you've got to get out and vote.Alec Hogg (22:07)William, why are local government election turnouts lower than national ones? There's a big difference between them. You would have thought, again logically, that it's much more important to get the right people running your town or your city than at national level, where the impact of their decisions might be bigger but might take a bit longer. Whereas if you get bad management of your town or your city, you feel it.William Saunderson-Meyer (22:37)Yes. Local government is the sharp end. That's where people encounter the apparatus of government in the most real terms: potholes, poisoned water, whatever it is. It's in their daily lives, and yet they don't turn out. I think, to start with, it's not an area of government that's very well reported on. The media attention given to national politics is immense. The media attention given to provincial politics is not high. And the attention given to local municipal politics is virtually zero.I'm not saying this is the only reason, but it is a reason for those low turnouts: people are not aware that there is a local government, or they're only vaguely aware of it. They're not aware of the issues, of who the performers are and who the flies in the ointment are. So there is less political engagement by the citizenry in what happens at municipal level.Alec Hogg (23:51)That's a very interesting point. Moving back to Gauteng, to Tshwane. You mentioned water. There's a Jonathan Katzenellenbogen piece that we're running on BizNews today which accuses Nasiphi Moya, the mayor of Tshwane, of being directly responsible for that city's inability to get its water right. Apparently they didn't put chlorine into the water for three weeks, and now hundreds of people are very sick as a consequence. Is that the kind of thing that will affect ActionSA's ability, (a) to bring people out, or (b) to register the votes?William Saunderson-Meyer (24:33)I would hope so. ActionSA is polling, I think, around 11%, so it's a really big player in that province. And of course there's all the antipathy between ActionSA and the DA there because of the role ActionSA had in dumping Cilliers Brink.I don't know if it does, though. Moya is a charismatic leader. I think voters find her exciting. The media finds her exciting. So I'm not sure it will have any effect. Voters in South Africa don't seem to connect bad actions with bad actors and punish the bad actors. Look at the rogues we've had in our history, including Jacob Zuma. There really hasn't been a punishment at the polls for bad acting. People vote on more emotional, visceral commitments. So I think ActionSA can probably ride that out. Although you'd think that, of all things, a scandal which involves children, the elderly, people in desperate straits, would affect the vote. But I'm not sure that it will.Alec Hogg (26:06)Mm-hmm. And the water tankers and that whole scandal as well. Let's finish up with this: what is the best-case scenario for the ANC? A lot of your column focused on that, and on how the obvious thing would be for the ANC to coalesce with the DA, keep it really simple, and have the GNU in local government. After 4 November, when the votes are counted, what's the best-case scenario for the ANC, given that it's polling so poorly?William Saunderson-Meyer (26:39)Well, the best case, of course, is that the polls are wrong and it comes in again at around the 40 or 45% level. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think there really is a best case. There are least-worst cases for the ANC. The ANC is a party in possibly terminal decline. All we will see from this election is whether that decline has slowed or whether it is accelerating.The ANC is in trouble. It's a nice, numerically tidy solution to do a deal with the DA, but it'll enrage the people within the party who still have strong ties and commitments to an arrangement with MK and the EFF.And also, quite unusually in world politics: normally in coalition arrangements the powerful party, the bigger party, gets the kudos and the coalition partner gets all the blame. That's not happening this time. It's very, very unusual. We have a situation where people look at the GNU and say, actually, the more effective partner in this is the DA. So the DA has benefited enormously from public perceptions. It hasn't translated into votes yet, but it may. Whereas the ANC doesn't benefit. And if the ANC does GNU-type solutions at municipal level, it's probably going to be in exactly the same situation: it will be bolstering the DA. It is a kind of reversal of roles taking place. So the ANC is in a very uncomfortable situation.Alec Hogg (28:28)And the best-case scenario for the DA?William Saunderson-Meyer (28:31)For the DA, the best-case scenario is a nationwide set of GNU-type arrangements at municipal level. The DA is not going to carry any of the metros on its own. Its best chance is probably Johannesburg, as a minority administration. But the best deal now is to make a deal with the ANC.Alec Hogg (29:01)And the best-case scenario for the people of South Africa, given that 83% of ANC voters, and you mentioned earlier 77% of DA voters, want those two parties to play nice with each other. Is that the best-case scenario?William Saunderson-Meyer (29:16)It's a bit of a utopian ideal, isn't it? I think it would be the best arrangement; whether that arrangement can work, I don't know. The two parties can probably find common ground more easily at municipal level than at national level. But if the ANC and the DA are in a GNU arrangement at municipal level, it's going to have a knock-on effect at national level, where the DA will start demanding considerably more leverage and exerting more of a role in that arrangement. And I don't think the ANC can tolerate that. It's inconceivable to them that they would surrender any control over the security forces, over intelligence gathering, over foreign affairs. Those are the things that really matter.So yes, look, without a doubt, and our entire democratic history shows it, the best thing is for us to cooperate. But the way that cooperation plays out is never tidy.Alec Hogg (30:35)We haven't mentioned him at all: Gayton McKenzie. He was front and centre for a lot of the last couple of years, but going into this very important election he doesn't want to talk to the media. He's told his people not to do so. He's had a couple of outbursts. Is he a spent force, or do you think the PA is going to come back strong here?William Saunderson-Meyer (30:59)I don't know about throughout the country, but I think the PA will without doubt be a force within many of the Western Cape municipal authorities. Again, it's a tribal thing. The coloured vote that the DA used to be able to count on has gone, in many cases, to the PA. There's an identification there, and there's a forgiveness again. He's a larger-than-life character. He's almost a Zuma, you know. You know he's a bad boy, but at the same time he's charming and interesting and boisterously outrageous, and people warm to him. People warm to Zuma; people warm to McKenzie. I don't know why. I find it quite puzzling, but they do. There's a real charm there, and that matters in politics.Alec Hogg (31:58) Fascinating as always, William. I look forward to the next time. William Saunderson-Meyer is the author of The Jaundiced Eye, which you can read on BizNews every Tuesday. And I'm Alec Hogg for the BizNews Edge.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.