On the morning South Africans voted, William Saunderson-Meyer argued that the count would deliver the verdict, but the coalition talks would decide whether anything changes. The Jaundiced Eye columnist told Alec Hogg why so many ANC voters see their party's failings clearly and back it anyway, why a lower turnout may favour the DA, and why the ANC had plastered Cyril Ramaphosa's face across every metro instead of naming its mayoral candidates. He said the DA had been outmanoeuvred in the GNU, that only the election calendar had spared John Steenhuisen a disciplinary inquiry, and that Cilliers Brink may be within reach of Tshwane. He also warned against reading too much into Donald Trump's midterm drubbing, and asked whether South African voters, like a long-beaten donkey, still had the spirit to kick back..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:06) Today, South Africans vote for their councils. Potholes, water, refuse, parochial stuff, surely? Well, not according to William Saunderson-Meyer. In his column this week, he argues that today's results are both a verdict and an indicator. They will show whether the ANC's failure in local government finally costs it power, not just votes. His warning is pointed.In 2021, the hung councils became a market for jobs and perks. Three years later, the government of national unity repeated the pattern on a national scale. Will the ANC now turn another electoral rout, which is being promised, into another governing reprieve? And if the DA gets the whip hand this time, does it know how to use it? William, welcome. As always, really good to be talking with you on a really interesting day, and after a fabulous column. But before we go into our own election, what are you making of what's going on in the United States, where it appears that Donald Trump and the Republicans are getting even more of a hiding than had been predicted? WSM (01:21) Yes, the predictions underestimated it. I mean, it's the first time in almost a hundred years that the state of Kansas has returned a Democrat to the Senate. It's a kind of trouncing that Donald Trump often speaks about giving his foes but rarely manages to do. So this is the mother of all elections, in that kind of Iranian sense, where there was a lot of bluster and not much delivery. He's taking a pounding, and it's a deserved one. It'll reset, from the point of view of the rest of the world, to some degree the American reputation in the world. The system is working. The checks and balances that the founding fathers worked into the Constitution are ticking along just perfectly. So whether you like Trump or don't like Trump doesn't really matter. The system is working.And South Africans should not take too much comfort out of that in terms of the pressure on South Africa. The pressure on South Africa from the United States, although it's been articulated mainly through Donald Trump, is to some degree bipartisan. So AGOA is out and is not going to be recovered easily or soon, if ever. And I think the kind of pressures that the State Department is putting on South Africa in terms of sanctioning officials and politicians that they believe are behaving badly may very well continue.Alec Hogg (03:09) Hmm. Just to bring us up to date as we record this: the Democrats have won the Senate. They've got at least 54 seats, up by seven. They've still got another two that they could be adding to it. You need 51 for a majority. And in the House of Representatives, the Democrats have won at least 25 seats. That's what they've got already. There are a few more to call, and it's expected that they will win at least 40 seats, which is bigger than most predictions.You understand how these things work. Many South Africans haven't got a clue. They just know Donald Trump's in the White House, then you have the Senate, then you have the House of Representatives. Going into this election, William, the Trump group, the Republicans, were controlling both the Senate and the House, and of course the White House itself. Now that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, what does it mean for Donald Trump in his last two years as president?WSM (04:12) It's the old term of the lame-duck president. For all presidents in the United States, the last two years are on a downward curve. It's not only that you have the expectations among your peers, among your colleagues, that you're about to leave, so the jostling becomes sharper, the elbows become more pointed. The kind of deference that Trump has insisted upon from his Republican colleagues, there'll be less of that. There'll be less toadying towards him. But that's a personal thing. In many ways what is happening is entirely how the system should work in the United States. It will hinder him on the foreign stage, but it won't stop him. He still has enormous executive powers and he'll exercise them. But he does it in the shadow that every action he takes now is likely to compound the misery of the Republican Party in the next presidential election. So that is a huge constraint on him. Well, it would be a constraint on most presidents. I'm not entirely sure that it's a constraint on Trump, who is such a maverick that one doesn't know whether he'll take any heed of the long-term implications for his party of what is just…Alec Hogg (05:39) Your warning, then, is that we shouldn't celebrate too hard. South Africa has been in the focus of Trump's ire. The fact that he can be held in check to a degree, you called it a lame-duck president, doesn't mean that South Africa is suddenly going to be persona grata [as spoken: "persona verigrata"; see notes] in the United States. We've still got a bit of a tough road ahead.WSM (06:05) South Africa's friendships with rogue regimes like Iran and Russia will continue to complicate its relationship with the United States. And I believe they will increasingly complicate its relationship with Europe. We very easily take solace in "our foe has been defeated", but he hasn't been defeated, and so much of our woe is not inflicted upon us by other people but is self-generated. Let's not get too excited about Trump getting a bloodied nose.Alec Hogg (06:42) Okay. There's a blue wave in the United States. We're all going voting today. The prospect that we're now going into potentially another blue wave here in South Africa has been raised by quite a few people. What's your reading of that? Could we have another blue day?WSM (07:04) Well, the ANC certainly will be hoping not. The ANC has been on a long road of decline, and today is just a punctuation mark in that. All we'll know from today really is whether the ANC has managed to slow that decline. It's unlikely that it has stopped it, and I certainly don't think it will have reversed it. The ANC has its back to the wall.But you know, the DA has been in this position before, where it is felt that it's on the verge of a breakthrough, as opposed to a breakdown, and it never really quite comes to fruition. Thirty percent of the national share of the vote, that's the magic number for the DA [see notes]. It's hovered below that, and it's never even got that close to it. I think the closest it got is 22%. So the pollsters and the analysts will be looking at those numbers to see whether the DA has made a breakthrough. But of course, the real breakthrough is whether the DA has enough votes to gain meaningful control in the coalitions that are likely to follow, especially in the big metropolitan areas, which are the lifeblood of the country. And I doubt it. Alec Hogg (08:35) Okay. Well, there were a few people hoping that Donald Trump would manage to pull off a miracle. There are a few people, no doubt, hoping that the ANC will do the same. It'll be interesting to see. We won't know for 24 hours what the situation is in South Africa. But if you go back to South Africa and have a look at what you called a verdict and an indicator: which is more important? The verdict being that the ANC is going to be punished for poor management of the municipalities over the last five years, but an indicator for 2029, which is now the date that many are saying could see material change in the way that the country is managed. A long way off, but help us through that. Verdict or indicator: which is the bigger one we should look for today? WSM (09:29) So these are our midterms, in a sense. We're looking along the road to a national election, and we're looking back to the immediate past, the national election, and 2021, which was the last municipal local government election. In that sense, what happens today is the verdict. Today is the measure of how hurt [as spoken: "hutful"; see notes] South Africans are, and whether they are thoughtful at all.I think it's one of the paradoxes. There are two paradoxes to me about the ANC, but one is how incredibly resilient it is to the antipathy of its own supporters. If you look at the polling that gets done, 53% of ANC voters associate it with corruption [see notes]. More than half of them say that it doesn't care about the poor; actually less than that, but a substantial number, almost a third of ANC voters, say it doesn't care about the poor communities, whereas only 6% of ANC voters say the same thing about the DA. So you have a situation where the ANC's voters have no illusions about their party. The only ones that are still voting for them are the hard core, the idealists, the true believers. We'll see how many true believers are left. That's where the verdict lies: with the ANC's own supporters, and whether they are going to punish it. They often don't punish it. So we'll know from that what the verdict is. The indicator is more difficult. We'll only know over the course of the next two weeks what the coalitions look like. And it's only when those coalitions start working, or not working, that we will have a shape of what's going to unfold over the next two years as we approach the 2029 general election. There are so many factors involved in the indicator. At the moment, if you look at the United States, you'd say that the Republicans are toast. It's not necessarily so; as we know, things can turn very substantially over the course of two years.Alec Hogg (11:43) Yeah.WSM (11:48) But it will give us an indication, at least, of what the trend lines are for DA liberal support on the one hand, and for an ideologically rigid and very poorly managed ANC. Alec Hogg (11:48) Yeah. Mm-hmm.Alec Hogg (12:09) It seems like everything's just sped up. When you talk about two years' time, if you go back a decade or so, two years seemed to be a lot longer than it is today.WSM (12:24) You're making it a bit shorter than it is. It's actually two and a half to three years to 2029. We're almost at the end of this year. But yes, there's a momentum. I think that's a very good point you make. We're looking at momentum now, and as momentum builds, things do seem to speed up. South Africa is in a difficult state, at a difficult stage, and there needs to be a momentum for change. Until now, we've bumbled along for so long with the kind of feeling that alles sal regkom [Afrikaans: "everything will be all right"].But there is certainly a confluence of pressures in terms of the economy and unemployment. I don't care where the vote goes today, but I'd like to see a serious turnout by South Africans. Although local government elections are notoriously less well attended than the national elections, one would hope that people are going to vote, because this is a very important election.Alec Hogg (13:30) Who does a low turnout help? Does it help the ANC? Does it help the DA?WSM (13:36) Well, the pundits say that it helps the DA, on the basis that the DA is better organised. As the smaller of the two parties until now, it benefits by having a good machine to get its voters out, to get special votes done, and on polling day to get every possible blue-rinse lady and Soweto gogo out to vote for them. The ANC traditionally has been well organised, but only in the end phase of the election. It hasn't managed to do that this time. We still don't know who their mayoral candidates are. Their campaign has been lacklustre. My impression, from looking at the posters, is that Cyril Ramaphosa is the mayoral candidate in every single metro in the country. They've gone with a national name and a national figure because they cannot announce who they want to have as mayor; it would cause such ructions and factional disputes within the party that they can't do so. It's utterly bizarre.So the feeling is that the ANC is reliant on loyal voters turning out. It doesn't have the same machinery to turn them out. So the higher the poll, the more ANC voters are turning out. The lower the poll, the more opposition voters, especially DA voters, are proportionally turning out.Alec Hogg (15:18) It's so interesting when you look at the polls going into this election as well. From the Social Research Foundation, nearly 70% of ANC and DA voters say they must get together [see notes]. And I don't know if you saw the interview I had with Frans Cronje, where he said that they are natural allies: the DA strong among the middle class, the aspirant middle class in the ANC. Put them together and you can actually make magic, potentially. Is Frans being a little idealistic, from your perspective? WSM (15:56) I can see the economic logic behind it, the sociological picture he paints, but I do think he's being hopeful rather than accurate about what is likely to play out. The ANC is an intensely ideologically dominated organisation. It wants the national democratic revolution. It has known for a very long time, from its own research as well as from research from the SRF and various bodies, what South Africans want. South Africans do want what Frans says. There's an enormous amount of commonality between the average DA voter and the average ANC voter. They want very much the same things. They even share a dislike of black economic empowerment policies, when these come with the great costs that they do. So there is a logical link-up there. That's why a link-up between the ANC and the DA has not only an arithmetic logic in this election; there is common ground to be exploited. But the problem is that the ANC has been in a GNU. The logical alliance has happened, and yet the ANC has barely budged from policies that are very, very injurious to the country.Alec Hogg (17:24) Was the DA outmanoeuvred in the discussions over the GNU, and do you think it's learnt any lessons from that going into the discussions that are likely to come after the votes are counted? WSM (17:36) Yes, undoubtedly they were outmanoeuvred. On the other hand, I must add that I don't know how they could in some ways have avoided that. There was enormous pressure on the DA from donors, and I think from within the party, from members, to join the GNU. It was seen as a big opportunity, and has been for the DA. So they gave away perhaps too much in those negotiations.The breakdown of who got which Cabinet post was bad for the DA. But in a way, they also handled it very badly afterwards. John Steenhuisen was quite seduced by it, and he was quite weak in the GNU itself. He kept laying down red lines, which he then backed off from completely. So I think it'll be a different thing this time around if the DA does go into coalitions at a local government level. They've learnt a lot, I would imagine, from their experience so far.Alec Hogg (18:47) You made mention of Steenhuisen in your column this week. How much damage has he done to his party, given the scandal, which now, I suppose, the way the world has sped up, feels a little bit like ancient history? But it wasn't that long ago.WSM (19:03) I think in a way that answers it: it already feels like ancient history. Yes, I think he did do damage to the DA. And I think if it was not a pre-election period, he would have faced a disciplinary inquiry, for instance, for the remarks he made about his ministers, essentially implying that they were engaged in the same kind of cronyism that happened in the Zuma years [see notes].So under different circumstances it would have been more of an issue. But I think the DA has just wanted to forget it, and they brushed it very neatly under the carpet, and they've got away with it. The focus is now on what Hill-Lewis can do. I find it interesting that the party which actually has the oldest voter age profile of the parties, which tends to be at the older end of the spectrum, whereas most of the other parties really reflect the national demographic profile, a very large segment of which, I think 40% of South Africans, are under the age of 39… it's interesting that the party with the older spectrum has elected the man who is the youngest leader, I think, of a political party now in South Africa [see notes].Alec Hogg (20:23) Mm. It's probably 40% of voters under 39, not South Africans. We've got lots of youngsters coming through, much, much younger than that. WSM (20:27) Yes, indeed. I'm talking about the IEC figures, yes.Alec Hogg (20:34) William, what about Tshwane? I had a really interesting chat with Cilliers Brink yesterday morning. He said he didn't feel that the polls were correctly reflecting what's going to happen in his heartland. Remember, this is a guy who was ejected because of the ActionSA decision two years ago. He's sat on the sidelines. He's got a very strong character, very high profile, very respected in the DA. I said to him: what happens if you don't become mayor? If you don't make it, are you going to stay in opposition? He answered, but not that question. He went off on a tangent, as a good politician, I suppose, would. But what's your reading of all of that? And do you think Cilliers would stay in opposition for another five years?WSM (20:55) Mm. WSM (21:27) I think he'll try to put together a coalition. It won't include ActionSA, clearly. And if necessary he'll try to govern with a minority administration. You could try to go it alone and see who is going to bring you down, and then you can retire into opposition at least with a certain amount of dignity. I think Tshwane is maybe the closest. He's polling five percent ahead of Helen Zille in Johannesburg [see notes]. So that puts him right on 40%. Add in a few percent for polling error, and add in the fact that ActionSA [as spoken: "actually in South Africa"; see notes] has had such a bad time with its mayor and the poisoned water, and he may very well be on the brink of… [inaudible] Alec Hogg (22:26) It's an interesting point you make about the poisoned water, or the inability of the council to put chlorine in the water. I asked him about that. I said, how can you actually blame the mayor for that? And his point was, well, she was warned three times round [see notes].Scandals in the United States, we've seen, have had a huge impact on the election there. There were a few. The one in Texas, which has given the Democrats that advantage there [see notes], which, were it not for the scandal that erupted in that state, was unlikely to happen. And it's happened elsewhere as well. I'm just wondering whether these scandals in South Africa are being absorbed enough among the voting public that they will punish those on the wrong side of them.WSM (22:41) Mm. WSM (23:18) I don't think to the degree that they are in democracies that are functioning efficiently. We're numbed. We're a nation numbed by bad things happening to us. And eventually, like a donkey being beaten by a horrid owner, we just endure the blows without kicking back. So again, this is the chance to see whether the donkey has sufficient spirit left in it to kick back hard at those that have been giving it a beating. They're badly reported to start with. Our media fails us repeatedly. It doesn't cover those things in depth and give them the prominence and earnest attention they deserve. So, much like, as you said, it seems years since John Steenhuisen made those silly comments, and yet they're all but forgotten. And I think the same with the water. The shelf life of a crisis in South Africa is very, very short.Alec Hogg (24:32) It certainly is. William, looking ahead to how we can analyse this election and what it might be telling us about the future, I get back to the question I asked a bit earlier: is this going to be a reflection on what's happened up to this point, or is it going to give us an indication of what might come in 2029? If you go back to 2024, we know that it was almost forecast in the 2021 local elections. It's hard to believe that the ANC was, not too long ago, on 60% plus of the vote. Then in 2021 there were cracks, big cracks showing; in 2024 we got the answer to that. How are you going to be reading the results when they do come through?WSM (25:30) It's so difficult, when you're reading results, to disentangle one's hope for a country from the ugly entrails of our politics. I think what we want to see is an ANC that is humbled. Let's put it this way: for the ANC still to be punished for its sins of the past. We need to know that voters are responsive to that, are unhappy with that, and are willing to cast their votes in order to indicate that.The DA will be happy with anything approaching 30%. It would be, of course, over the moon if it can win one of the major metros, especially Johannesburg or Tshwane. But even if it serves in coalitions, this election potentially opens very, very big windows for the DA. For the first time it has a chance of moving beyond being a gadfly to being a serious player in national politics. And it comes into this election with an advantage which it didn't have in 2024, when it joined the GNU. That is that many voters were afraid of the DA, thinking it might cut off social welfare, et cetera. Now they have a sense of the DA as being reasonably efficient and patriotic, and they've lost a lot of their fear of the DA. It'll be very interesting to see if the habituation that the DA has experienced over the past two years is going to pay off at the polling booth. Those are the things that the DA will be looking to in order to project where they're going to go in the future.For the other, smaller parties, it's merely a matter of survival. It'll be very interesting to see what the votes are for no-hopers like Rise Mzansi and BOSA, and for that matter the South African Communist Party. They've all thrown their caps into the ring, but…WSM (27:55) …if obliteration comes, it will be well deserved. So I would like to see the small parties really take a hammering. An end to the indulgence of tiny micro-parties that switch and change allegiance at a whim and have no ideological coherence to their programmes will be a good thing for South Africa. Alec Hogg (28:20) William Saunderson-Meyer is the author of the longest-running political column, The Jaundiced Eye, which is now on BizNews. And as always, it's a real pleasure to get your insights. Thank you, William. I'm Alec Hogg from BizNews TV.